Westpac promises to keep hands off Count clients
By George Liondis
The WestpacBank’s group executive of wealth management, David Clarke, has given the Count Financial group his assurance he will not attempt to poach any Count clients introduced to the bank through the BT Wrap platform.
The managing director of Count, Barry Lambert, says Clarke agreed not to market any of the bank’s products to Count clients at a meeting between the two last week.
The assurance came after Lambert had expressed concern over Westpac’s access to Count clients in the wake of the bank’s decision to buy the BT Financial Group, which includes the BT Wrap.
Count is the biggest supporter of the BT wrap, investing $1.5 billion through the product.
However, despite Clarke’s assurances, Lambert last week did not guarantee that Count would maintain its exclusive wrap relationship with the Westpac owned BT platform.
“It wouldn’t matter who owned the BT wrap, we will look at what else is in the market,” Lambert says.
And Lambert says Count has been approached by a range of leading wrap product providers seeking to establish an alliance with the dealer group since Westpac’s acquisition of BT was announced.
Relations between Count and Westpac soured last year after a move to include the bank’s loan products onto Count’s recommended list of products was abandoned when Westpac refused to give the dealer group a guarantee that it would not market its financial planning services to Count clients.
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