Fiducian puts cash to work with tuck-in acquisitions
Advice licensee Fiducian is in the process of acquiring around $94 million of assets via tuck-in acquisitions.
The firm’s financial planning division has 77 advisers across Australia, and net inflows from financial planning activities stand at $343 million. Funds under advice stand at $5.1 billion as of 30 June, up from $4.8 billion in the previous year.
In a speech at its annual general meeting on 9 October, executive chairman Indy Singh said: “Our focus will remain on generating inflows through organic and inorganic growth, further acquisitions of client bases that we believe can be quickly assimilated and onboarding of franchised offices that exhibit a strong cultural fit with the existing network.
“A number of tuck-in initiatives, where client bases are purchased and introduced to our current salaried advisers, are being pursued by the business development team and around $94 million of assets are in the process of being acquired.”
In June 2025, it acquired a client base in Melbourne, which it said could be for an acquisition value of $2.4 million, with the client paid for only when they accept a Fiducian adviser and its advice model. It has also entered into agreement to acquire a client book in regional Victoria for $960,000.
In its financial year results in August, Singh had detailed how the firm was holding $34.9 million in cash after receiving net cash inflows of $8.3 million. While he said acquisitions were an option, he was wary of making large deals.
He said: “Small acquisitions are preferable to me such as when a vendor is either exiting or they want to work with us for a few years, that is easier to absorb and digest and bring them across, whereas a large acquisition takes two years to break even.
“If there’s a big one that will be EPS accretive and the advisers can be assimilated into our process and not want to do their own thing by themselves, which would make it risky for us, then in that case we will take a bigger one. We have cash and are ready to do that but we are not going to throw shareholder money away for the sake of acquiring someone.
“Some of the other larger acquisitions we have heard about, billions of dollars have been spent but the share price have halved or gone even longer. If we are going to make an acquisition then we have to be very confident that it will EPS accretive for our business and for our shareholder else we are spending the money with little to gain.”
AUTHOR
Laura Dew
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