Guardian Advice has added BT Life to its existing group of preferred partners, which includes Asteron Life, AIA, OnePath and CommInsure.
Guardian Advice head Simon Harris said BT Life complements Guardian’s other insurance partners.
“[It also] gives our advisers a little bit more product breadth and depth, which we think is important moving into a best-interest environment,” Harris told InvestorDaily.
He said Guardian had no immediate plans to add more financial services companies to its group of preferred partners.
“We think that five is the right number for our size at the moment, but we’ll continue to review that probably annually,” he said.
Guardian’s partner relationships aim to benefit all stakeholders – advisers, their clients, Guardian itself, and selected life offices – through improving profitability to developing closer relationships.
“Coupled with our focus on adviser business development, our preferred partner arrangements mean we have the best possible practice support and service provision, which will help to support Guardian advisers,” Harris said.
The move is in line with Guardian’s growth plans to add new practices to the group and boost its adviser numbers to more than 200 in the next three years.
As a result of the Future of Financial Advice reforms and anticipated structural change to the industry, more advisers are seeking a flight to security and taking some time to do additional due diligence on their next dealer group.
“We’re in active discussions with over 50 practices at the moment, we’ve got a high proportion of those within Queensland, NSW and Victoria, and they’re at various stages in the process,” Harris said.
“With all the regulatory uncertainty going on there, I think [our] institutional backing by a large corporation like Suncorp is providing security for advisers. That’s making us quite attractive.”
