Lowell Flinders sells off non-core business

Financialplanning group Lowell Flinders is set to cut the unit trust and planning training arms from its business to focus on servicing private planning clients.

The sales of the business arms are in an advanced stage of discussions and are expected to be finalised within a week.

Lowell Flinders managing director John Godfrey says the group is dispensing with those businesses that don’t support its core business of servicing private clients.

“We have acquired a number of different businesses and reached the point where we have had to decide which ones to hang on to,” Godfrey says.

“It’s like a smorgasbord, where you put a lot of things on your plate but then decide on the things you don’t want, like brussels sprouts,” he says.

Other businesses within the group that help to sustain the core business, such as the estate administration, accounting and tax, and administration and secretarial business, will be retained.

Godfrey says it was important to focus on the core business, as funds had been invested in various ventures within the business and while they were performing well, were yet to turn a profit.

The sell-off has involved no senior executive or key people changes, though five staff have been retrenched.

Godfrey says the business is looking to slowly add client and adviser numbers over the next 12 months as it moves into a period of conservative growth.

He says advisers are only employed if they have a similar view of the world to the group, focussed around the private client.

Godfrey says all financial planning businesses should be continuing to evaluate their position in the present fast changing environment.