Lonsdale and brokers team up in new venture
LONSDALE Financial Groupis aligning itself with general life insurance brokers in setting up a number of new financial planning practices, which through a process of referral will have exclusive access to the latter’s clients.
“We’re planning to set up a separate entity in which the broker will help fund the establishment of the business, and we will put advisers into that business to work off the referrals from brokers,” Lonsdale general manager Mario Modica says.
Initially the group aims to establish these practices in Sydney, closely followed by other practices in Melbourne.
“We haven’t got specifics on paper at present as agreements are in the process of being completed, but we’ve got verbal agreements from two [brokers] and I suspect when we get it up and running there’ll be a number of others showing interest too,” Modica says.
Modica believes there are a lot of opportunities for insurance agents to start a financial planning business on the back of their general insurance broking book.
“Really this part of the market is begging for some service — we’ve got a recruiting guy in Sydney who used to be a general insurance broker himself and he’s going to make the placements of planners into the business.”
Lonsdale is also close to launching a package to aid those accountants not seeking to become fully-fledged financial planners with the means of offering advice on self-managed super funds (SMSFs).
“We’re going to provide accountants with a limited authority to provide advice on SMSFs,” Modica says.
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