By Craig Phillips
Boutique financial planning firm Centrestone Wealth AdvisoryGroup has confirmed its push into the lending advice space, with the launch of Centrestone Lending Advisers.
The group indicated it was seeking to add to its existing financial planning and risk advice capabilities and was considering expanding into lending advice back in January, but Centrestone joint chief executive Rob Keavney says it had taken time to put the team together.
The initiative, which Keavney is anticipating will deliver a loan book of $1 billion within three years, will launch with a team of five.
It will be jointly managed by former Bleakleys’ general manager Lyle Jones and independent lending adviser Kieran Canavan, with a team of two lending advisers — Ken Small and Mark Herman — and a business support manager, Tracey Amos.
Keavney believes the new initiative offers the group a number of benefits such as meeting clients’ needs without having to refer them to another institution and lose a potential source of revenue.
“If a client needs to arrange finance for structured loans, a business or a mortgage, planners generally tend to refer them externally and give away a strong revenue source to another institution. Now with our lending and risk division, and given a large proportion of our target client base are high-net-wealth, we can offer comprehensive integrated services at all stages of a person’s financial life,” he says.
Keavney says each lending adviser will work with a small group of planning and risk advisers in addition to external referral sources.
“Centrestone’s original vision included a comprehensive service covering financial planning, lending and risk. We are very selectively recruiting lending advisers able to operate successfully at this high-end of the market,” Keavney adds.
