Securitor Financial Group (Securitor) plans to embark on an aggressive growth strategy, with the group hinting it may purchase advice books from rival dealer groups to achieve its goals.
As part of its strategy, the Asgard Wealth Solutions’ financial advisory group has undergone a re-brand and rolled out a new recruitment program called, Growth through partnership.
Securitor head Neil Younger said the program is part of the group’s push to meet demand from its existing adviser network.
The program follows on from Securitor’s recent initiatives of an academy style training program, Business Torque and AdviserNETgain.
Younger said he would like to move Securitor’s recruitment strategy up a gear into a more robust, apprentice professional development model.
He has also not ruled out purchasing advice books from external dealer groups.
“We don’t believe we can attract new advisers to sustain our growth. So we’re looking at different avenues where we grow our planners,” Younger said.
“Our thinking at the moment is that its not just about buying practices. It’s in some circumstances about buying clients.
“We are working on a program of work which at this stage I won’t go into too much detail at this stage, but all I can say is that it will facilitate that transition of clients form outside the network and into the Securitor practices.”
Younger said another avenue the company is taking is moving planners out of St George Financial Planning and across into Securitor.
“Certain planners actually want to move into owning their own business rather than being an employee of a bank. And what we’ve identified is that we can create career paths for individuals for individuals,” he said.
Asgard Wealth Solutions head of wealth management distribution and sales, Wayne Wilson said in the last 12 months six advisers from within St George Financial Planning have moved over to Securitor, with four more working towards the transition.
“I’m currently working on looking at these avenues because we’re targeting some significant growth in St George Financial Planning numbers and in deed have exactly the same problem that Neil has alluded to,” Wilson said.
Wilson said St George Financial Planning has an associate financial planning model which acts like a two year apprenticeship that rolls people into the then financial planning space.
“We’re looking at models across Securitor, St George Financial Planning, the private bank our big dealer to dealer clients that look for help in this space,” he said.
Securitor will announce further details regarding its growth strategy in January 2008.
