Scottish banking giant HBOS’ assault on the Australian investment industry is gaining traction, with its financial planning, insurance and investment arm St Andrew’s making a strong contribution to the overall group’s $552 million full year profit.
“Whilst the insurance and investment arm still remains small, it over doubled in size in 2005. It posted a $10.8 million profit, up from $5 million last year,” HBOS Australia investment and insurance managing director John Van Der Wielen said.
He pinned most of the growth on insurance sales, particularly of the St Andrew’s term product, which is being sold through bank and building societies like Bank of Queensland, HBOS-owned BankWest and IMB.
“Most of the profits were in life insurance sales — we’re still investing significant amounts of money in the wealth management space. We’ve doubled profits but we’ve invested significantly so next year’s profit is expected to double.”
Van Der Wielen said St Andrew’s financial planning operation now employed 30 planners, up from six a year ago.
“What we’ll do is keep growing the planners in pods of 10 or 12 and each time they become self sufficient and profitable for the business we’ll expand into another lot.”
Van Der Wielen confirmed statements made by HBOS late last year that it was still looking to aggressively grow planner numbers to up to 100 in the coming year or two.
He said the group would also ramp up marketing for its investment platform, Top 200, released in the second half of last year, which cuts out financial planners and goes direct to investors.
At the time of interview he could not specify exactly how much money had flowed into Top 200 last year.
“But for the overall investment and insurance operation, we kicked off with $21 million and we’ve finished the year with $412 million. The insurance side has experienced a 74 per cent increase in premium growth.”
