Coming from an accounting background provides a good platform to launch a new dealer group, says Premium Accounting Group general manager Helen Bridgewood.
“It helps a lot in terms of credibility and also you already have an existing client base that you can build on.”
Established back in June 2000, the original members of Premium were top writers with Count. Now the group has 24 member firms with 59 authorised representatives, most of whom are CP or CPA trained. All but one is accounting-based with Adviser Resources Centre the latest group to sign back in July last year.
To join Premium, advisers must have at least $20 million funds under advice.
This made getting off the ground easier for Premium because they didn’t have to worry about providing marketing or start-up support.
Bridgewood says having an accounting background means the group is able to offer more services from the one place.
“Having the corporate authorisation has helped that too because clients now know them as XYZ Partners not as Premium Accounting Group.”
Every member firm has equity in Premium depending on their size.
“Because our board is all financial planners, decisions that are made actually affect the people who make the decisions,” Bridgewood says.
The group meets with its adviser stakeholders once a month to discuss issues from strategy right through to practical issues.
“These are the people at the coalface so they have a very practical concept as well.”
But Bridgewood says the main benefit of independence is flexibility in choice of platform, choice of investment and even in choice of research provider. As well as using mainstream research providers such as Lonsec and van Eyk, Premium has recently approved the use of emerging research house Zenith.
“They are able to be nimble to do research on new things that are available, so given our size we feel we are able to offer those services to clients. I think this is a big difference to one of the larger groups who can’t move so fast.”
The group’s chairman, Simon Wu, says independence has two main benefits.
“Firstly, you have no alliance and you have no bias towards any aligned type product. Secondly, your remuneration is not attached to whatever product you recommend, and that would give far more confidence to the client than any aligned type of adviser,” Wu says.
He says smaller groups can allow their advisers to use riskier products that larger organisations might be too afraid to use.
“I can fully understand groups like Count or any other big group being reasonably restrictive because the size of the group means that they will have advisers with varying levels of experience and expertise.
“Because at Premium we know our advisers so well, we can trust them to offer products that would usually be seen by the larger groups as too risky.”
