Despite not having met the target of being one of the top five dealer groups in terms of advisers at the end of last year, Axa is comfortable with the current combined size of its financial advisory network (FAN), according to FAN general manager Andrew Waddell.
The intention was that the dealer group would have close to 1100 authorised representatives operating under its banner by the end of 2007 but the actual number achieved was 1051.
“Importantly we didn’t want to achieve this objective by sacrificing quality having just gone through the challenges of FSR (financial services reform). We didn’t want to just add for the sake of meeting the target,” Waddell said at the 2008 Axa FAN symposium.
“We stand before you having no enforceable undertakings, none of our advisers banned, and most importantly we’ve avoided things like Westpoint, ACR, Fincorp and all those other litany of disasters which means your clients still have their money.”
In terms of total numbers combining Axa Financial Planning, Charter Financial Planning and Jigsaw the dealer group was ranked sixth.
The planning network was able to meet all of its other goals including doubling its amount of new business and reaching $6 billion in funds under advice (FUA).
“We’ve tripled new business numbers in the past four years.We had some good fortune. We’ve had fantastic investment markets which made returns for your clients very attractive over that period of time and we also had positive legislative changes,” Waddell said.
“We also had some challenges like FSR to deal with in delivering those objectives and we didn’t waiver from them, we focused on them and I’m pleased to say we were able to achieve them,” he added.
