Garry and David’s vertically-integrated collective
Outsider has read a lot of recent opinions, including that of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, suggesting that vertically-integrated financial services businesses such as banks might struggle to put clients’ best interests first.
Thus, he was fascinated to hear industry funds stalwart and chairman of Industry Fund Services, Garry Weaven, outlining the various entities which had arisen from the collective efforts of the industry funds.
Speaking on a panel at the Conference of Major Superannuation funds which included ACTU president, Ged Kearney and Industry Super Australia firebrand and Tin Tin doppelgänger, David Whiteley, Weaven reeled off the names of entities birthed by industry funds such as Frontier Investment Consulting, IFM Investors, ME Bank, the Australia Council of Superannuation Investors, ISA, the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees — the list just went on, and on.
And it was after hearing that list that it occurred to Outsider that, taken together, those organisations seemed each to be part of a vertically-integrated whole.
But Outsider does acknowledge that Westpac, NAB, CommBank and ANZ do lack the purity owed to having been created out of collectivism. Right comrade?
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