Perpetual has announced it will cut 102 roles in an effort to reduce costs.

The measure will result in cost savings of $9 million before tax a year from the 2012 financial year onwards.

Perpetual also said it would redistribute certain roles to build greater flexibility in its cost base.

"Moving towards a more variable cost base will enable us to take advantage of improvements in terms of both revenue generation and operational environment, as well as give us the means to better manage periodic downturns," Perpetual chief executive Chris Ryan said.

"To give greater impetus to this effort, I have appointed Richard Vahtrick as Group Executive Operations. Richard joins us from IBM in June and will have a company-wide mandate to accelerate the introduction of the variable cost structure and the transformation of our IT architecture to a competitive cost model," Ryan said.

Perpetual also said it would look to boost its distribution capabilities and made a series of appointments to support this move.

"We have a great brand and outstanding investment performance, but are facing challenges in terms of distribution to some target client segments. Perpetual needs to develop the agility to strategically develop new products and services based on identifying market growth opportunities and then resource the response adequately," Ryan said.

Perpetual has created two new group executive roles, in sales and in marketing.

"Brian Henderson, formerly with Fidelity International, will join us in June as Group Executive Marketing and we are also well advanced with the appointment of a Group Executive Sales," Ryan said.