Deakin refugees consolidate Wealth Managers revival

Since losing a large part of its advisory base, SMF-owned dealer group Lynchpin has changed its name to Wealth Managers, installed a new advisory software provider, and confirmed it is close to signing a number of planners left hanging by the shutdown of Deakin Financial Services.

Last October, 17 planners broke away from the old Lynchpin dealer group to form their own dealer group, Client Wealth.

Wealth Managers managing director David Mazengarb said the name change from Lynchpin was largely triggered by these older practices leaving.

“There was a bit of a groundswell from a lot of the advisers who thought the Lynchpin name was not palatable — and was another thing they had to explain to clients. We are also trying to promote individual businesses within the dealership and Wealth Mangers is not a headline brand,” he said.

Mazengarb could not confirm exactly how many Deakin advisers he was in discussions with, but said he expected Wealth Managers to have around 50 authorised representatives within the next six months, up from its current 31.

He also said that the Lynchpin brand was not conducive to recruiting and expected the new name, along with several enhancements to the group’s service offering, would attract planners away from a number of dealer groups, culminating in Wealth Managers reaching 70 advisers in 12 months time.

Improvements to the group’s service proposition included replacing its in-house advisory software program, Discovery, with Xplan, offering a mortgage broking service through its Sentinel Adviser Services platform, which Mazengarb said attracted $10 million in its first week of operation, and establishing its own risk advice service, Risk Easy.

“That is an outsourced service to provide risk writing services to our advisers, who are mostly accountants and financial planners and don’t have a lot of experience in risk, and it generates another source of revenue for the adviser’s practices.”