Fiducian aims to grow planning numbers



Publicly-listed diversified financial services house, Fiducian Group has pointed to further growth in the financial planning space via acquisition.
At the same time as announcing a strong first half with a three per cent increase in net profit before tax of $2,864,000, the company pointed to its continuing growth objectives in the financial planning It reported that after normalisation for the one-off restructure expenses of $505,000 the company's EBITDA increased by 26 per cent from $3,112,000 to $3,942,000.
Discussing its objectives in the financial planning space, the company said that there had been a heightened effort to build the distribution base with quality financial planners.
"Opportunities to add new franchisees are continuously being progressed and between 1 July 2014 to the date of this report, we have added around $81 million of funds under advice through new planners to the group and expanded operations," the company's Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) announcement said.
It said that the additional planning operations had not contributed to the company's results of the current half year but were expected to do so in the second half.
"The Board is supportive of growth by acquisition in the current environment and we have progressed opportunities for acquisition of financial planning practices which we anticipate could be completed before the end of the financial year," the ASX announcement said.
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