Tower signs ex-Trust exec to head Pivotal

By Craig Phillips

Tower Australia-owned risk advice dealer, Pivotal Financial Services, has a new chief with former head of financial planning at Trust Company, Steve Murray, joining the group. Murray took up the helm on Monday and replaces Ken Brewer who resigned in April.

Murray, who was private clients general manager with Trust prior to resigning just before Easter after five years in the role, will be charged with driving the recently restructured Pivotal to maintain a pure risk focus, according to Tower chief executive Jim Minto.

“The first thing Steve will do is make sure everything is squeaky clean and everybody is up to speed, as a number of advisers were late in transitioning to FSR. After that we will focus on being a tight risk advice dealer group,” Minto says.

The departure of Brewer, who joined from Royal & SunAlliance in June 2003, was shortly followed by the restructure of parts of Tower’s risk and wealth management business, which resulted in the head of Pivotal now reporting through to Minto.

Following Brewer’s departure to work in the property sector, Tower technical risk and sales executive Paul Stewart stepped in to steer the Pivotal business until a replacement was appointed.

As for last year’s restructure of Pivotal itself, Minto says when he joined Tower 18 months ago, Pivotal was moving towards more of a wealth management focus.

“We didn’t really have a strong value proposition, so it was important that we addressed that, which we did last year,” Minto says.

Prior to his time at Trust, Murray also worked with a number of financial planning groups including Monitor Money, Advance Bank, FMP and IAPS.