Commonwealth swallows last Colonial planners
The Commonwealth Bank will wrap up the integration of the Colonial State Bank planners in two weeks, combining the two planning forces into one with a total planning force of 650 nationally.
Customer service division, personal customers general manager Graham Carney says the overall integration of the two bank networks is set to finish and that would include all branch based activities, including planners.
Prior to the integration the CBA had a three tiered planning system which included financial planners, investment consultants and personal bankers.
The CSB structure held only the first two tiers and Carney says that model has been adopted across the combined network.
Carney says the third tier under the CBA model included planning staff who were only part time and it had been decided to only have planners acting full time with the two new tiers separated by products.
"There will be a degree of commonality and a uniform system but the products they sell will be subject to authorisation. Planners will have limits on the funds they can write on and clients will be recommended onto higher level planners if needed," Carney says.
"There is no objective in aiming for a single tier as the lower tier acts as a good training ground. Planning is a critical part of the business, and resourcing it from the market is difficult and so we have to grow the numbers ourselves to go forward."
The only group to remain untouched by the merging of the two planning forces has been Financial Wisdom, which was run as a third party planning group under Colonial.
Third party banking and adviser services general manager David Pegley the group will operate in the same way for some time as most of the focus has been on the integration within the branches.
"There has not been much focus on Financial Wisdom as this business does not overlap with the CBA bank based planning business," Pegley says.
AUTHOR
Jason Spits
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