Privately-owned dealer group Australian Financial Services (AFS) is expecting to add another 20 practices to its network before the end of the year.
“We’ve averaged 20 practices joining AFS over the last three or four years so my intention would be to grow by a further 20 this year,” AFS chief executive Peter Daly said.
The size of practices the dealer group is looking to recruit are those with a gross annual income of at least $500,000.
As far as core business activity is concerned, AFS wants to include practices that can compliment its existing network of authorised dealers.
“The obvious ones we’d look at are mortgage aggregators. We might even look at a general insurance brokerage style operation,” Daly said.
“[We’re looking at] anything of that nature that’s not too far removed from their existing business and often where they, being the practices, are in some way tapping into those particular market segments,” he added.
“When you are looking at somebody’s financial plan one of the obvious things you’re going to start talking to them about is ‘do you have a mortgage, etc?’. That automatically leads to a cross-selling opportunity. This is not something our practices have considered proceeding with yet.”
AFS has around 100 financial services practices operating under its Australian financial services licence.
On average these practices are generating a gross annual income of $1 million, Daly said.
AFS also intends to list on the Australian Securities Exchange by 2011.
