Monitor finds grass is not always greener

AXA’s Summit master trust has been slammed by disgruntled advisers of financial planning groupMonitor Money, with many regretting the decision to roll over from the Assure wrap service into the AXA platform back in April.

This is a U-turn for the Monitor advisers, given they were supportive of rolling the group’s $500 million plus in funds under advice into Summit when the group became part of AXA back in October 2001.

“One of the first things AXA did was talk to the individual planners and ask them what they wanted, and unfortunately, at that stage planners believed the Assure platform — that they had been using since 1987 — was flawed,” says Monitor Money general manager agency and compliance Gregg Charles.

However, in moving to Summit, Charles says planners transferred from what had been “a very personalised system into AXA, an organisation with a larger and less flexible platform.

“AXA have a way they work and a way they want to run the business. We didn’t get what we used to have and planners suddenly realised that the Assure platform was in fact good — a situation of the grass is always greener on the other side,” he says.

However, Charles says AXA is slowly coming to grips with the way Monitor operates, which he says is substantially different to the Charter and AXA financial planning operations.

“We’ve spent 18 months trying to run through the differences but this will evolve and it will all come good.

“We run a wrap service and have done so since 1984, whereas they’re predominantly master trust driven and their relationship with Ipac is very close, as both of them are in the master trust sphere. Whereas wrap services are different and something AXA are trying to come to grips with.”

A group of advisers who operate under a full commission basis with Monitor are currently negotiating contracts with both groups, according to Charles, in an effort to find a solution to the concerns.

“AXA, Monitor and the planners have all been thrown together to try and come up with an offer to four commissioned planners, which is satisfactory to all parties,” he says.

Monitor Money has four salaried advisers and 22 contractors — five of whom are sub-contractors on a retainer and 17 are full commission based — of those, all but the four appear to be reasonably happy with the offer that has been made, Charles says.