St George Wealth keeps happy dragon smiling

The growth of St George Wealth Management accounted for a significant proportion of St George Bank’s record $1.026 billion annual profit, according to Asgard chief executive officer Geoff Lloyd.

Comprising Asgard, the Securitor dealer group, Advance Asset Management, Investment Solutions, margin lending and insurance, the wealth management group accounts for 12 per cent of the overall profit for the year.

The group’s funds under administration are up 24 per cent in net flows, now totalling $40 billion, and market share has increased to 9.2 per cent from 8.2 per cent last year.

Lloyd attributed this to the group’s product innovation and its reinvestment in infrastructure for growth.

Specifically, he referred to the introduction of the adviser platform Elements and AdviserNETgain. He said changes to its insurance and margin lending businesses also played a role, with the latter boosting its receivables to $2.6 billion, a 63 per cent increase, making it the fifth-largest provider of margin lending services in the market.

The positive results mark the near completion of three aspects of Asgard’s ‘big seven’ strategy in the area of advice provision.

This strategy relates to the rollout of AdviserNETgain and Advance Asset Management and the transition of its new adviserNET practice management-centric platform software to the beta-testing stage.

Lloyd referred to the Securitor dealer group as a “hidden gem” within the group, with its strong revenue growth within the competitive market seeing its productivity grow by 30 per cent year on year.

He also pointed out that the dealer group’s history of complaints for the year was very low relative to its competitors.

“This is important because of Asgard’s strong compliance culture; it’s one very strong metric that demonstrates this versus our peers.”