Research house Standard and Poor's (S&P) will not seek further institutional clients for their consulting business but will concentrate on the retail/wholesale market.

S&P director of fund services Mark Hoven will oversee the existing institutional clients and new retail/wholesale clients.

The group will maintain its existing institutional relationships but will not take on any new clients, Hoven said.

He said S&P will build upon its recent crop of agreements with financial planning dealer groups.

"We are going to concentrate on the wholesale advice side of the business, an area we are doing better in," he said.

"We see a lot of upside in this space and it aligns us to where we are going with our research business."

Last year S&P signed an exclusive contract with Commonwealth Bank of Australia to provide the bulk of its financial planning research.

It also won a contract to provide fund ratings and research services to more than 300 planners and 55 dealer groups through independent platform provider Netwealth.

The research house has a longstanding agreement to provide ratings and research to St George platform Asgard and its dealer group Securitor, a legacy of S&P acquisition of Assirt in 2005.    

The group is targeting any financial planning group with an in-house research capability as a potential client, Hoven said.

"As we bring in new clients we want to grow our consulting team and this would include cherry picking staff from the dealer groups as part of the arrangement," he said.