Axa’s Discovery program, which recruits salaried financial planners with a view to setting them up in their own businesses, will launch an awareness campaign next month.
Discovery chief Tim van Leeuwen said volatile financial markets over the past few years had deterred some planners from striking out on their own, opting to remain in salaried positions.
“We’re hopeful that a lot of those advisers will look at getting into their own business. When they think of doing that, we want them to think of Discovery, not any others,” van Leeuwen said.
He said the awareness program was also an opportunity to promote a $100 million lending pool recently released by the banking arm of parent AMP to Discovery participants for refinancing or acquisition.
Axa first set up the program in 2003 and has since recruited about 330 planners to its ranks. It buys client databases from existing advisers and sells them to new entrants over a deferred period of time.
“We believe that the acceleration that will happen for Discovery will be strong,” van Leeuwen said.
The program brings in about 40 recruits a year, and would look to boost that to a maximum of 50 people a year.
“If we could get to 40 to 50, and maintain that, everyone would be very happy,” van Leeuwen said.
“The internal rate of return and the benefit to the business is enormous at that rate. We don’t need to go too much beyond that.
“We’ve got no ambitions to bring in 100 people or 200. If we did that we would have to reduce the quality that we think works best.”
