AMP has stepped up its efforts to provide Australians with greater access to financial advice with the launch of a consumer-targeted financial planning centre.
AMP Financial Planning managing director Michael Guggenheimer said as well as offering retail advice, the centre is also a means of providing career progression to financial planning licensees.
“When we look about the financial planning industry as a licensee within the industry, we notice starting out is really tough,” Guggenheimer said.
“One of the challenges is not just doing what they need to do to generate venue, but also thinking about all the different aspects of running a business.
“So one of the benefits of running our financial planning centre is that we will provide all the infrastructure – the onsite support to allow the financial planner to do what they do best and that is provide the financial planning to their clients.”
Guggenheimer said the centre, which has the capacity to house 20 financial planners, is part of a strategic challenge the group set itself.
“We as a team at AMP Financial Planning set ourselves a challenge of saying: how else can we consider growing?” he said.
“This has arisen out of us saying this is something that we need to invest in, this is something that we need to pursue and therefore we’ve made it possible within our operating expenses and therefore we’re committed in getting it to work.”
The centre will open unofficially next week with five fee-for-service based financial advisers, with a number of other advisers close to signing on, Guggenheimer said.
The financial advisers will also have access to AMP’s newly revamped product suite.
“All of the product ranges within the group were all renovated to make sure they have no in-built payment to financial planners,” he said.
“There has been a huge amount of work that has been needed to be undertaken in the back office as well as within the financial planning firms to make sure the firms are ready and capable, as well as the planners.”
AMP has not ruled out taking its financial planning centre model and expanding it nationally.
