Kaplan buys Finsia Education

Warren Jacobson

The Financial Services Institute ofAustralia(Finsia) is to sell its business education division to global education provider Kaplan for $36 million.

The proposed sale of Finsia Education, which was announced last night at Finsia’s annual general meeting, follows Kaplan’s acquisition last year of local Finsia Education competitor Tribeca Learning for $56 million.

The proposed sale of Finsia Education is subject to the results of a preference ballot of Finsia members to be held within the next two months, and also finalisation of legal documentation.

Warren Jacobson, Kaplan Australia director (and also chief executive of Tribeca Learning), said the acquisition would “bring increased scale to Kaplan’s education business, and increase opportunity for additional investment in the Australian professional education sector”.

Jacobson said Kaplan’s decision to acquire the Finsia Education business was “largely based … on the opportunities available to increase the scale of Kaplan’s education business in the Australian financial services and mortgage broking sectors”.

He said following the proposed sale, Finsia Education would “become a more member-centric body, devoting its resources to professional development, course accreditation, as well as policy research and advocacy”.

Finsia president Michael Shepherd said the decision to sell Finsia Education was based on a strategic board review last year of Finsia Education’s “present and future role”.

The review found the “resources of an organisation such as Kaplan were needed to take the division to its next stage of development with greater certainty and speed than Finsia’s resources would allow”, he said.