Aust Unity on planner search

Insurance and financial planning group Australian Unity has lost close to half of its financial planners since May as a result of a major overhaul of its dealer group.

In the wake of the departures it has embarked on a mass recruitment drive to at least replace those who have left by early next year.

The Melbourne-based dealer group completed the restructure of its business in May. This involved taking all of its financial planners out of high street shop fronts “that look more like a bank”, stripping them of their retail insurance selling duties, and putting them into individual offices of their own.

General manager, retail services Travers Stow said staff losses incurred were the result of the overhaul.

“We had 12 planners who were predominately focused on the retail side of things and they decided to leave with the restructure, so for starters, we want to get back to having 22 planners,” he said.

But Australian Unity’s recruitment drive won’t stop there. Stow said any young, up and coming planners “who have grown up with legislative reform and are comfortable with it” would be most welcome at the group.

In their own “professional” looking offices, Australian Unity financial planners, who previously had to sell general and health insurance and third party auto and travel insurance, will be able to concentrate purely on addressing the investment management needs of a rapidly growing referral base, Stow said.

He said Australian Unity was close to recruiting at least five planners into the overhauled structure within the next month.

“We can support a network of 20 or so at the moment, so we’re a tad over-cooked in terms of support. But if we expand beyond expectations, we’ll add-in the paraplanner support as we need it,” he said.

Having already received numerous enquiries, Stow said Australian Unity was “getting quite warm with five [recruits], and there’s probably another five that will get quite warm in the next few weeks”.