ANZ delays fee-for-service

The ANZ Bank has postponed plans to roll out a fee-for-service remuneration model for its advisers until early next year, in order to ensure its network of planners is able to justify charging clients an upfront fee.

At a time when commission-based remuneration is increasingly under the spotlight, ANZ had initially planned to implement its fee-for-service scheme earlier this year but rescheduled for an October launch.

However, this has now been put back until January.

The bank’s fee-for-service model has been trialled by a group of 30 ANZ Financial Planning advisers since October 2003. ANZ Financial Planning head Mike Goodall says the latest postponement is to ensure its broader network of 260 advisers is able to provide a service level to clients that warrants the payment of an up-front fee.

“If you’re an adviser that hasn’t provided a proactive level of service in the past, and instead have been reactive, then it’s clearly not a value proposition to take to a client,” he says.

“We’ve got some people who were in that sphere and haven’t done that and clearly it’s something we’re looking to change.”

Goodall says the concept of introducing a fee-for-service model is not a difficult thing to achieve — the difficulty is being able to offer a service that meets clients’ needs.

“We want to make sure the value proposition of the advisers matches the model, so they’re recognised by clients as providing good service and meet the client’s expectations,” he says.

“[Other] reasons why we haven’t moved it out further are that the data systems we had, in terms of how clients pay for service, hadn’t been up to scratch, and because we’re also piloting seminars and a whole range of marketing information, such as newsletters, to see if that’s what clients want.”