High profile planners band together under one licence

Two of the biggest names in financial planning have joined forces.

Outgoing FPA chairman Ray Griffin and fellow FPA board member Greg Gunther will merge their financial planning businesses under an agreement recently signed by the two planners. Gunther, Doyle, Griffin will start with four financial advisers, 14 staff, about 400 clients from southern Queensland and northern NSW and about $100 million under advice.

The seeds for the merged venture were sewn more than six years ago after Griffin delivered a talk at the 1994 FPA conference in Perth titled "A Country Practice". Gunther didn't attend the conference but read Griffin's paper a couple of weeks later. After reading Griffin's paper, Gunther asked him if he could buy his time for a morning to pick his brains on how he ran his financial planning practice in Tamworth.

Griffin agreed and since then the two "have been shooting the breeze on a regular basis", Griffin says.

The bulk of the administration for the combined businesses will be done in Gunther and Doyle's practice in Toowoomba. The systems have been developed by Geoff Doyle, who will head up the group's systems and financial planning operations. Griffin will be in charge of marketing the group while Gunther takes on the role of managing partner.

Griffin says both businesses had reached a point where they needed to expand rapidly or stand still.

"As all financial planners who have been around for a while find, you need to either bring more staff and administration systems or shut the door to new clients," he says.

"While the geographical split in our businesses makes good sense, the over-riding consideration in deciding to merge the businesses was to systemise the practices so we could both expand. With the best systems, we could spend less time caught up in the day-to-day running of the business and more time fine tuning our strategy."