Merc strives for loyalty

Buying a large dealer group like RetireInvest is not all beer and skittles.

Buying a large dealer group like RetireInvest is not all beer and skittles.

“When you buy distribution what do you get? You get a brand but bugger all else,”

says Mercantile Mutual’s deputy general manager, integrated financial services, Tony Hartley.

Addressing the recent Rice Kachor distribution seminar, Hartley said one of the problems fund managers faced when they buy a distribution network is that while they own the network, they do not own the financial planner.

“We don’t own the franchisees,” he says. “They break away because they already have their own businesses. They get their own licences and then they get up at seminars and tell other people how to do it.”

To help reduce the risk of franchisees leaving, Mercantile Mutual has developed a relationship/partnership approach with its franchised financial planners.

“We can’t command the support of our franchised financial planners — we must earn the right to receive it,” Hartley says.

To win support, Mercantile Mutual is developing a strategy which increases the planner’s slice of the pie first and Mercantile Mutual’s second.

“The truth is, if we do that, our own business benefits along with the financial planner’s business,” Hartley says.

One of the first steps the fund manager has taken is to help its advisers with business planning — things like direct marketing, brand marketing, getting advisers in front of direct networks.

“We help planners to build their businesses and as a result of that we can say to them, ‘We notice that in your business, you do this and this — we have a product we think might help you.”