Aussie players expand into Asia
Australianbased companies are preparing to capture a bigger slice of the burgeoning market for financial services in Asia with at least three major organisations making a renewed assault on markets across the region.
The push is being headed by the Australian branch of the global Norwich Union group, which is preparing to launch its flagship master trust, Navigator, into Singapore as a precursor to the roll out of the product throughout Asia.
Meanwhile, also in Singapore, Australia’s largest independently owned dealer group, Professional Investment Services (PIS), is this week expecting to have its application for an Independent Financial Advisers (IFA) licence approved by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
PIS chief executive Robbie Bennetts says the dealer group, to become the first non-Singaporean company to be granted the licence, will invest $5 million to grow its business in Asia.
Money Managementhas also learned that ipac, the financial planning firm founded by high profile investment consultant and media commentator Paul Clitheroe, has opened an office in the Philippines and is set to open another in Hong Kong.
The business in the Philippines has been established as a joint venture between ipac and Global Link, a Manila based financial planning group. The new venture in Hong Kong, to be wholly owned by ipac, is expected to be officially launched within a month.
The chief executive of the Navigator master trust, Marc Mengler, says the group’s move into Singapore, nine months in the planning, would be complete by the middle of this year.
But he says Singapore is a test market for the group ahead of an even more ambitious plan to launch Navigator in markets across Asia.
Mengler says there is an increasingly affluent and well educated portion of the population throughout the region looking for more sophisticated financial solutions, creating enormous opportunities for group’s that have honed their skills in Australia’s highly competitive financial services sector.
“The good thing about a product like Navigator is that we can leverage off the technology that we have developed in Australia to meet a growing demand in Asia,” Mengler says.
The executive chairman of ipac, Arun Abey, says the launch of the two new offices is an attempt to capitalise on what is considered a largely untapped market for the provision of financial advice and related services throughout Asia.
“There is only moderate competition in both the Philippines and Hong Kong and in many other Asian countries, and I would urge other Australian planning firms to examine the opportunities,” Abey says.
Ipac, which has existing financial planning businesses in South Africa and Taiwan, is also currently assessing opportunities in Singapore, India and China.
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