Macquarie banks on more planning growth
Macquarie Bank is planning to step up its first foray into financial planning operations, after merging its direct retail funds management business with Macquarie Equities' retail stockbroking business.
Macquarie Bank is planning to step up its first foray into financial planning operations, after merging its direct retail funds management business with Macquarie Equities' retail stockbroking business.
The new business, to be known as Macquarie Financial Services (MFS), will operate as a single point of entry, offering existing private clients investment banking products, information, research and advice through 14 offices across Australia.
MFS already has more than 250,000 private clients and around $6.5 billion in funds under management, administration or CHESS sponsored holdings.
Macquarie Bank executive director Tim Farrelly says MFS's financial planning capabilities come from its recent acquisition of broking firms Nevitts, Day Cutten and Porter Western.
"This is a business that it we would like to grow," he says.
MFS will be recruiting financial planners, but, according to Far-relly, it will also adopt a more wholistic approach to customer service, using the group's existing resources as well as paraplan-ners. Macquarie says it already has more than 175 client advisers.
It stresses that its commitment to its network of independent finan-cial planners, stock brokers and accountants will remain unchanged.
Indeed, the group says the independent distributors will continue to be a core distribution channel for the bank.
Farrelly says distributors need not worry about client confidentiality or about any cross marketing. Strict rules will be kept concerning separate data bases and strong "Chinese Walls".
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