Tower merges distribution arms
TowerFinancial Services will merge the distribution arms of its life investments and trustee (portfolio management) operations into one group from today.
The life investments operation covers the risk insurance and managed funds side of the business while trustee operations are concerned with superannuation products.
The new single entity will be headed by the current general manager for distribution and marketing at Tower Trust, Peter Cocks, in the role of acting chief executive of Tower Distribution.
However the chief executive of Tower distribution, Alex Kay, will step down from that role and leave the group all together.
According to Tower, the merger of the two distribution arms brings together the sales activities of the group, which was partly a result of the implementation of the Financial Services Reform Act (FSRA)
Group operating executive Ken Boag says the FSRA will force more planners into dealer group structures and the re-organisation of Tower’s distribution will give the group a greater focus on planners within dealer groups.
“As a product manufacturer and supplier we need to have more alignment with dealer groups and it did not make sense to have two teams. This will increase the size of the coverage we have in each state in distribution,” Boag says.
Apart from aligning the efforts of both groups with all products to be distributed from the integrated group, Boag says there would be minimal changes to the Tower group as a result of the two arms merging.
Boag also says there would be no further departures from the merged group but a number of key roles would be redefined over the coming months as all staff are trained to work with both sets of investments products.
Tower is also considering launching a number of new products according to Boag and is investigating ways to leverage off the master trust operated through the Bridges dealer group which Tower purchased two years ago.
AUTHOR
Jason Spits
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