At its annual convention in Darwin, Westpac-owned dealer group Securitor has named NSW-based Primewealth as its financial planning practice of the year for 2009.

The practice received the title for retaining clients and achieving rapid growth over the last 12 months.

Primewealth is led by principals Guy Wall, Christian Borkowski and Peter Gooden. It operates from the Sydney suburb of Chatswood.

The planner of the year award went to Arthur Roe of Arthur Roe and Associates in Melbourne.

Roe managed to grow his financial planning revenue by more than 20 per cent in 2008, while most Securitor practices saw a revenue decline of 30 per cent on average.

He will add new advisers who specialise in risk services to his business over the next couple of months.

Aset Wealth received the title of Licensee Select business of the year for its diversification strategies and re-engineering of its best-practice processes.

Aset Wealth was established in March 2008 and is led by chief executive Andrew Turnbull and head of financial planning Sean Hammond.

Best new recruit was Newcastle-based planner Craig Leibbrant, who received the award for rising star of the year.

Leibbrant, who runs TCM, joined Securitor in April 2007 and achieved higher than budgeted revenue growth over the past 12 months.

"All four national winners were able to achieve strong growth throughout 2008, and key to this has been their effective and sustainable revenue diversification," head of Securitor Neil Younger said.