Axa-owned dealer groups Charter Financial Planning, Axa Financial Planning and Genesys Wealth Advisers have together built the biggest recruitment pipeline the group has witnessed in a number of years, Charter and Axa Financial Planning national manager Paul Williams has said.
“We haven’t had this many advisers looking to join Axa dealer groups in two to three years and I think that in part can be put down to our decision to combine our recruitment teams across the three dealer groups, as well as ipac, midway through this year,” Williams said.
The recruitment team, which currently comprises six full-time recruitment specialists, is currently looking to appoint a seventh recruitment manager, with practice managers also offering additional recruitment support to member firms.
Williams said one of the key reasons the recruitment team worked better as a combined group was because it could now promote a choice of dealer groups, models, brands and platforms to different styles of advisers.
“A big portion of the advisers that want to come across to Axa dealer groups, whether they’ve been approached by us or come to us of their own accord, have been bank advisers that want to move from being salaried to self employed,” Williams said.
“Many of then are disillusioned by the banking models in which they operate under and many of them want to have equity in their businesses and build more sustainable client relationships.”
Williams said another thing that was attracting advisers to the group was the Discovery program that was launched through Charter and Axa Financial Planning in 2003 and which was rolled out by Genesys in May this year.
As part of the Discovery program, dealer groups buy clients from existing advisers and sell them on to new entrants within their networks over a deferred period of time to assist them in becoming practice owners.
“Advisers have also been attracted to us because of our breadth of acquisition and succession solutions, and our ability to provide advisers with more face to face dealer group support and marketing assistance when trying to attract clients,” Williams said.
