Macquarie targets the rich with new dealer group

MacquarieWealth Management has signed up the first six planners for its new affiliate dealer group, Lachlan Wealth Management, luring them away from Godfrey Pembroke.

The planners, who advise on $350 million of high-net-worth individuals’ portfolios from an office in Melbourne’s Mount Waverley, will now operate under Macquarie’s licence and the Lachlan Wealth Management name.

The most senior of the office’s 14 support staff, chief executive Philip Pezzi, will sit on Lachlan’s advisory board.

He said the Mount Waverley practice, which runs an unusual corporatised model where each adviser is a salaried specialist in a particular area like mortgages or superannuation, who doesn’t individually own clients, was better able to charge for its premium service within a start-up dealer group.

The office will tap into the existing research, compliance and software infrastructure used by Macquarie Wealth Management’s 50 staff advisers.

The head of Macquarie Wealth Management, Jane Watts, who is setting a modest target of 100 advisers under Lachlan’s umbrella in three to five years’ time, said Lachlan would only accept advisers specialising in high-net-worth individual business.