When it comes to Australia’s largest wealth managers, Centrepoint Alliance is clearly winning the race when it comes to share price performance with returns of more than 230% over the past year.
Looking at data over the year to 30 April, 2021, four of the major wealth management players had seen positive returns while one had reported negative performance.
Centrepoint Alliance returned 236%, followed by Fiducian at 58%, CountPlus t 32% while IOOF returned just 1.4%. AMP Ltd was the only one to report negative performance with losses of 11% while the ASX 200 returned 37% over the same period.
During the period, Centrepoint Alliance returned to strong financial performance with earnings of $2.1 million in the first half of 2021 compared to a loss of $400,000 in its prior first half.
The strong performance was coming off a low base, however, after the firm suffered a difficult period beginning in August 2018. Looking at performance over five years to 30 April, 2021, shares rose 7.4%.
This coincided with the firm undergoing a three-year repositioning of its advice business and “strategic refresh transformation” and a significant shift in the financial advice regulatory landscape.
In its results for the first half of 2021, the firm said net profit after tax was $1.6 million compared to a loss of $1.5 million in the previous corresponding period. The dividend was three cents per share special dividend and one cent interim dividend in light of the improved financial performance.
Announcing the results at the time, chief executive, Angus Benbow, said the company was focused on driving organic growth in the licensed and self-licensed market, leveraging its scale advantage with adviser technology investments and pursuing consolidation opportunities.
The company was also backing its advice technology strategy as a key driver of business growth and had reached agreement with UK-based Intelliflo which would make it one of Australia’s first large-scale licensees to access Intelliflo’s open data architecture.
However, it was worth investors watching what happened in the first half of 2021/22 as Benbow would be departing at the end of May 2021 after three years.
