Bleakleys and AIS planners sever Partnership

Less than one in four planners from Bleakleys and Advisor Investment Services will make the transition to Partnership Planning under tough new guidelines for the group.

Only 100 out of the 400 financial planners who made up the two groups have moved to the combined structure, leaving owners ING with half the number of financial planners it had a year ago. ING's other financial planning dealer group, RetireInvest, continues to grow strongly, according to ING Financial Planning chief executive Mark Spiers, who oversees both the RetireInvest and Partnership dealer groups.

The paring down of planners follows a major restructure of ING's financial planning businesses. Under the structure announced late last year and coming to fruition now, Bleakleys and Advisor Investment Services (AIS) would combine under the Partnership Planning banner. In turn, Partnership and RetireInvest would share certain dealer group services under ING Financial Planning (INGFP).

Dealer group services such as IT, administration, HR, training and compliance are now housed under INGFP, however both RetireInvest and Partnership will keep individual research teams. Technical support will soon combine under the INGFP structure.

The split in revenue between the planners and the dealer group has also been standardised. This has meant that former Bleakleys planners now retain a higher proportion of the revenue they earn while the AIS planners have a reduced proportion of revenue. RetireInvest planners maintain a similar revenue split to before the restructure.

Partnership has also changed the relationship between the dealer and the adviser to a structure that resembles a franchise agreement. It has also made the strict stipulation that potential recruits to Partnership must be prepared to commit to a professional financial planning practice that can potentially have revenue of more than $200,000.

Most of the exiting planners come from Bleakleys which had 300 planners when the last Money Management Top 100 Dealer Group research was conducted in August last year.

Partnership Planning general manager Mike Walker says a number of the Bleakleys' predominantly accounting-based practices were unable to commit to growing their financial planning revenue to more than $200,000.

"While it was a very difficult decision to have to let the practices go, profitability levels for the entire group were unsustainable under the old structure," he says.

However, it was not only the less productive Bleakleys practices that have parted ways with Partnership. As reported in Money Management earlier this year, three of Advisor's highest earning practices in New South Wales in North Sydney, Parramatta and Newcastle decided they did not like the new structure and formed the boutique dealer group Avenue Capital Management. Avenue has since recruited a further ten practices and amassed $600 million under advice.

Walker stresses the parting between Partnership and the three AIS practices was "amicable".

"We would have loved to keep them at Partnership but we knew and they knew the new revenue split was not going to suit the way they run their businesses," Walker says.

"We worked with them to gain their dealer's licence and they are now buying support services through ING's Adviser Solutions business. We are happy to at least have retained a relationship with the planners."

Radical shake-up at Partnership - page 10