Matrix Planning Solutions has received a higher number of inquiries from prospective buyers following the announcement of the Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) reforms, the dealer group has said.
Matrix managing director Rick Di Cristoforo said while the group had not seen any offer on paper worth discussing, the FOFA reforms were likely to be behind the increase in interest.
“To be honest we’re not looking to sell at this time, but our eyes are always open and obviously if a commercially viable offer did come across our table, we would take it to our shareholders, the vast majority who are practice owners,” Di Cristoforo said.
“In the meantime, we’ve been focusing our attention on pending legislative changes and bolstering resources across the business.”
He said Matrix would restructure its compliance and advice support team, with the addition of two new compliance and paraplanning resources.
“We will offer paraplanning services to our member firms for the first time in order to provide assistance with complex plans and overflow work that their own paraplanners or staff might need support with,” Di Cristoforo said.
“Both resources will be highly capable in paraplanning and compliance audit and will assist firms in utilising software functionality as well.”
He said Matrix would also begin fee-for-service, service packaging and strategic advice implementation workshops from February and had created a template tool to assist member firms in creating or improving their own personalised practice websites.
“On the research side of things, we want to further expand the way in which our clients can access share equity markets as well, so we will be releasing Matrix share model portfolios built in conjunction with Morningstar and will be implementing a series of managed accounts also. Basically it will be an extension to what we already offer,” he said.
Meanwhile, Matrix has recently signed one new firm to the dealer group and is in serious discussions with another eight practices, two which are self-licensed.
