More than 20 Associated Planners Financial Services (APFS) and Garrisons staff have been retrenched less than three weeks after the formal acquisition of APFS by Challenger Financial Services Group.
In all, 23 personnel are set to depart — six from APFS and 17 from Garrisons — as a result of a merging of the advice firms’ back-office systems ahead of Challenger’s plans to fully integrate the groups into a single financial planning business.
Managing director of the two businesses Ray Miles says the retrenchments are group-wide, although he stresses that no advisers have been affected by the move.
For Garrisons, the 17 departures are divided between 10 in-house staff and seven contractors. The in-house staff will leave over coming weeks, while contractors will depart when their existing contracts expire.
Despite the move, Miles says some new positions have also been created.
“We decided that the staff numbers we would require at the end of this would be about 106, including some new positions. We have about 120, and of the current staff we needed about 97,” Miles says.
The group is now working towards consolidating the APFS and Garrisons individual dealer licences by March 2005, when the merged business will be re-launched under a new brand.
Challenger’s deputy executive director of wealth management Rob Adams has previously stated that the group’s goal is to build the merged business into a household financial planning brand.
