Accounting alliances helping to drive Hillross growth

Dealer group Hillross is exploiting a growing trend by accounting firms to include financial planning in their offering to help drive its growth.

Hillross managing director John McMurdo said the wholly-owned AMP subsidiary has entered into a web of alliances with accountancy firms, both through Hillross itself and its member advice firms.

McMurdo said Hillross had recently partnered with three major accounting firms that have “either decided they want to do some financial advice or decided they want to do it better”.

In addition, he said more than 60 per cent of member practices have now entered into formal arrangements with local accounting firms, of which 25 per cent are formal joint venture arrangements.

“We see more and more scope for the financial adviser to be cognisant of accounting, tax, insurance, etcetera, which will driving these alliances within our group.

“In turn, as we do more and more of these, we have learnt a lot more about how to work with these accountancy firms, and also how accounting works well in tandem with advice,” he said.

Growth at Hillross, which will be launching a national brand marketing campaign on June 14, has also been driven by a “flight to quality playing out” among advisers in Australia.

"I said two years ago at the start of the financial crisis that we would see this flight to quality by advisers, and we are now unquestionably seeing this.

“Our growth has been driven a huge number of referrals either from existing firms or new firms that have joined us in the past couple of years.”

The group now has 300 advisers and “a little over” 100 advisory firms around Australia, an increase of 13 new practices since June 2007, McMurdo said.

“In June 2007 we had 275 advisers and today we have 315, so we are near the 15 per cent growth mark in two years,” he said.