As wealth management becomes increasingly important for Yellow Brick Road (YBR), the company has revealed plans to focus on affordable advice for 'outsiders’ – women, young people and small businesses.
The wealth management division now brings in around 30 per cent of YBR’s total branch revenue, according to the company’s quarterly commitments report for the three months ended 31 December 2013 – up from 7 per cent from the same quarter last year.
YBR attributed strong growth in wealth revenue to the launch of its low-cost superannuation product RetireRight, with over 800 clients applying for the product in the first six months.
“The recent launch of the business’s comprehensive self-managed super fund (SMSF) service has also been successful and enables the business to tap into the large growth in retirement savings,” the company stated.
Meanwhile, providing affordable advice to the so-called 'outsiders’ – women, young people and small businesses – is one of the five main points of its draft submission to the Government’s financial systems inquiry.
YBR released a five-point draft submission yesterday and is asking for public feedback before it lodges its final submission.
The five points include transparency in interest rate advertising, increasing competition in the banking sector, more help to Australians with their personal finances, supporting the dream of owning a house and having a comfortable retirement, as well as introducing a “fairer system for outsiders – women, small businesses and young people”.
“We’ve been thinking for some time about the difficulty many Australians – particularly women, young people and small businesses – have accessing affordable financial advice, affordable home loans, and building life savings,” YBR chief executive Matt Lawler said.
“We’re asking Australians to put forward their responses, their ideas and their personal stories and take this once in a generation opportunity to fix the financial system to make it fairer, more affordable and more competitive.”
