Count Financial chief executive David Lane has strongly denied the dealer group has become a captive of the Commonwealth Bank’s size and product set.
In an interview with Money Management ahead of the dealer group’s national conference last week, Lane announced a series of enhancements to members of the group.
These include cheaper platform fees and, crucially, expanding the benefits of Commonwealth Bank ownership and employment to the dealer group’s authorised representatives, as well as to selected small-to-medium enterprise clients.
Lane said Count would be providing the authorised representatives and the owners of its member companies with "the exact same suite of services that you would get if you were a CBA employee".
"So things like 70 basis points off your home loan, like a 20 per cent reduction on general insurance," he said.
"They are things that as a CBA employee I know I use and I know that all my colleagues use, Lane said.
However, Lane strongly denied suggestions that the leveraging of products and servicing offerings from within the Commonwealth Bank had served to confirm that Count Financial had merely become a subset of the big banking group.
"I would absolutely deny that," he said.
"I am committed to maintaining an independent Count with an independent brand, with an independent location, with an accounting focus and with an open-architecture approved product list.
"What it now has behind it is significantly more support than it ever had," Lane said. "And having options and having choice is very different to not having choice."
He said that while he may be talking about a suite of Commonwealth Bank services, this did not preclude Count members from talking to every other bank in the marketplace.
"We encourage it and we expect it of them because that’s the type of advisers they are," Lane said.
"But we’ve now put in front of them a very attractive package that we think is going to be very competitive with all the other financial institutions in the marketplace" Lane said.
Among the other benefits outlined by Lane to the Count conference was that the dealer group would be providing its member firms with lending packages which would enable them to finance the sale of financial planning practices.
"As an accounting firm, if you want to buy out one of your partners who wants to retire and you want to fund number two person into that role or you want to go out and buy another business, we have a set package," Lane said.
Count would also be able to act as a conduit via which small-to-medium enterprise clients could also access Commonwealth Bank products and facilities.
