The Strategist Group is looking to immediately enlist another 30 financial planning or accounting groups to its network of self-managed super fund (SMSF) specialists, the Strategic Alliance Program.
Strategist Group chief executive Grant Abbott says the group, with some 21 planners and accountants already signed up to the Alliance program, has the capacity to accommodate a total of 50 groups in the network.
But Abbot says the current recruitment drive is part of a wider strategy by the Strategist Group to increase its capacity to accommodate up to 100 planning or accounting groups in the Alliance program within 18 months.
Abbott says the mounting popularity of SMSF’s, which was the fastest growing sector of the superannuation industry in the year to September 2001, would increasingly force a select number of planners and accountants to focus exclusively on SMSF.
But Abbott says very few practitioners, and particularly accountants, have the necessary skills to function profitably as SMSF specialists.
He says the Alliance program, which, for a fee, provides practitioners with SMSF training and business support, would help groups transition themselves into SMSF specialists.
“We know that there are opportunities for groups to specialise in the self managed super fund area and that is what our strategic alliance is all about,” Abbott says.
