Phillip Aris
Independently-owned dealer group Total Financial Solutions Australia (TFSA) has moved to sustain its expansionary momentum via a comprehensive re-branding exercise, including moving its head office from Wollongong to Sydney.
The re-branding move comes just weeks after the dealer group’s decision to outsource its back-office functions, including commission payments, to Paragem Partners.
TFSA chief executive Phillip Aris told Money Management the re-branding exercise followed an extensive review of the company’s existing market position and its future growth strategy.
While the group originated in Wollongong in 1999, it has now established a strong geographic presence in NSW, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia.
Aris said that it was this geographic expansion and some industry perceptions of being a regionally-based dealer group that prompted the decision to open a Sydney headquarters. It also an advantage to be closer to suppliers and industry peers.
Allied to the re-branding exercise, TFSA has appointed a new independent chairman, former CUSCAL chief executive and Tower Risk director Steve Laue.
Aris said that utilising the new branding, TFSA would be seeking to expand its presence via its offering to advisers to not only operate their own practices but to take up a shareholding in the dealer group.
He said TFSA would be looking to pursue what he described as a “cluster model” with respect to identifying suitable financial planning practices.
“We will be looking to align with planners who feel our model represents the right fit,” Aris said. “But rather than pursuing single planner or two-man operations, we will be looking towards three, four and five person group practices.”
He said that while the tenor of personal relationships tended to colour involvement where one or two person practices were concerned, he believed that the three to five person ‘clusters’ were based on far more pragmatic and commercial terms.
Aris believed that the three to five person ‘clusters’ were far more sustainable and based on a more pragmatic and commercial approach.
He said he believed the TFSA model represented an attractive proposition for planners and that the decision to outsource the back-office functions to Paragem had added to its attractiveness and the support it could offer to members of the group.
