A full house at GAP

Dealer group Associated Planners Financial Services (APFS) is certainly living in interesting times. The firm first began its active recruitment drive in 2002, which culminated in the acquisition of over 60 new advisers during the 2003/04 period, and put it at third position in our list of Fastest Growing Dealer Groups.

Further growth is likely to come from an unexpected source — namely the Challenger Financial Services Group, which launched a successful takeover of APFS last year, resulting in the subsequent merger with Challenger-owned Garrisons Financial Planning. While APFS and Garrisons continue to operate under separate dealer licences at present, the two groups will be formally joined and relaunched as Genesys in March of this year.

Garrisons, ranked at number ten in our research, had also been pursuing its own growth strategy. According to Andrew Creaser, deputy managing director of the merged group Garrisons Associated Planners (GAP), “they weren’t as far down the track as the APFS business model was, but we were heading to the same place, so it was a natural fit”.

AFPS currently has three people dedicated to the recruitment process, one each based in NSW, SA and Queensland. The groups strategy is to focus on recruiting firms, rather than individual advisers.

Creaser says AFPS had a clear process in mind to enable the group to achieve its growth objectives. “First, we had an aggressive recruitment drive to attract practices in our target market. Predominantly, the firms came from other dealer groups, bank or life company groups, and a few firms with their own dealer licence.”

The typical member firm houses around three advisers with another four staff, and has an average turnover in the region of $500,000.

Creaser says “the next step in the process was corporatisation” — that is, ensuring the firms had adequate resources available internally in order to maintain their self-sufficiency. This included the appointment of paraplanners, client services advisers and other staff to support the business. Creaser adds: “Our view is that a customer should have a relationship with a practice, not just an individual.”

Finally, the recruitment process sought to resolve issues around succession planning. “Some of our older advisers were looking to wind down and transition ownership of their firm to the next generation. So we were instrumental in bringing in advisers who were keen to start taking an equity interest in a firm.”

It should come as no surprise that the new brand, Genesys, already has an aggressive growth strategy planned for the future. Creaser says the group is looking to effectively double in size over the next three to four years. “We have very specific medium and long-term goals, and this is an ongoing strategy. The recruitment teams will remain in place, and will be committed to attracting like-minded advisers and practices.”