Sequoia has made its latest acquisition of Clique Paraplanning, a national outsourced paraplanning service for financial advisers.
In an ASX announcement, it said it has acquired Clique Paraplanning in cash on an earn out revenue multiple of approximately 1 times, consisting of $150,000 cash and shares valued at $60,000. The earn out and final payment of up to $70,000 is payable 12 months post-completion.
Clique has employees and contractors in Melbourne and Sydney, and provides outsourced paraplanning services to financial planners and AFSLs, particularly around statements of advice and ongoing documentation reviews.
It is also used by other advisers for more sophisticated plans or when advisers have a backlog of work preventing them from providing new client advice services.
Sequoia, which is headed up by Garry Crole, said: “Clique has been an approved provider of our licensee services division for some time, following an assessment by our compliance team of the quality of its advice documentation. We encourage advisers to outsource these services if they are high quality such as the Clique service. This also frees our advisers to do more advising.”
The firm has been on an acquisition spree lately as it acquired legal service provider Australian Business Structure Pty for $2 million in December 2023 as a way to broaden its product offering.
In July, the firm signed a heads of agreement to acquire and merge Castle Corporate and Castle Legal.
The two businesses were described as “prominent and reputable firms specialising in providing accountants, financial advisers, and lawyers comprehensive advice and solutions relating to new and existing companies, trusts, and self-managed super funds (SMSFs)”.
It also acquired a 20 per cent stake in Euree Asset Management in the previous month, a new firm headed by former Australian Football League player James Hird as chief executive.
Sequoia said: “[Euree] will initially offer three fund options aimed at supporting financial advisers who want to reduce the cost of advice by accessing a single fund that has the intellectual property and know-how to select a range of investments under one umbrella across various asset classes to form either a balanced, growth or property-style fund.”
