Paul Northey
St Andrew’s Australia has commenced an aggressive growth strategy that will see the dealer group’s financial advisory network swell from 65 planners to 300 by 2011.
In today’s terms, such a substantial increase would position the HBOS Australia-owned business as the 16th largest dealer group, according to Money Management’s 2007 Top 100 dealer group survey, which this year ranked St Andrew’s at 70.
The recruitment drive is to be facilitated through the expansion of another HBOS business, BankWest, which recently unveiled the first of 160 retail banking stores to open nationally.
“As BankWest expands onto the east coast of Australia, the St Andrew’s wealth management business will provide financial planners to support [BankWest’s] customers,” St Andrew’s director of wealth management Paul Northey said.
“We expect to have financial advisers in most of those BankWest stores as we grow over the next few years.”
He added that planners would also be recruited to support Whittaker Macnaught, an advice business St Andrew’s acquired in February, as well as BankWest’s private banking arm and the member base of RACV, which St Andrew’s has an exclusive licence to service.
St Andrew’s plans to employ a multi-tiered approach to sourcing advisers, which will be market driven, but will also involve the development of existing staff as well as potentially taking advantage of HBOS’ large UK-based advice business.
Although aware of the tight labour market within Australian financial planning, Northey is confident the group will meet its recruitment goals.
“I think we’re an attractive place to come at the moment because of the growth as a whole,” he said.
“I’m not saying it’s easy, but we have been able to meet what we have needed in terms of recruitment in the course of this year, so I am encouraged that whilst we are about to ramp that up and become more aggressive again, we are on the right path.”
The dealer group also plans to further expand its already diverse approved product list by building upon its research capability over the next 12 months.
“HBOS Australia has an absolute desire for St Andrew’s to make a substantial contribution to the group,” Northey said.
“In the last 12 months we have gone from 2 per cent to 4 per cent of group earnings — our goal is to take that to 10 per cent of group earnings.”
