Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s (CBA) acquisition of Count Financial has created a pipeline of referral opportunities for member firms within the group’s subsidiary, Countplus.
“We are now beginning to open doors, talking to a lot of accountants, they’re starting to open up to us in referring risk insurance business to our advisers,” Total Financial Solutions (TFS) chief executive Phillip Aris told InvestorDaily.
“CBA represents a great opportunity for us because they will continue to grow the Count network and in turn we will have more accounting groups to talk to in building our referral network.”
In Aris’ view, building relationships with accountants is key to accessing the small and medium size enterprise (SME) market.
“[CBA] offers a lot of opportunity for us. It gives a strong backup, that will continue to build that referral network for us and that’s important for us going forward,” he said.
“It has given us a lot more opportunity. In a lot of ways it’s given us the best of both worlds.”
For dealer groups, it is important to find “your space” amid the challenging times facing the industry, Aris said.
“You’ve got to pick where you want to be. We don’t want to be a huge dealer group in terms of adviser numbers. We want to be very selective about who we bring on board,” he said.
“That’s how we want to grow, we’re not looking for numbers but looking to the quality of practices that we have.”
TFS plans to continue engaging as many accounting firms as possible, he said.
“We want to utilise the successes we already have in terms of building relationships and using those successes to educate our other advisers,” Aris said.
TFS is now 37 per cent owned by CBA following the takeover of Count last year.
