ING dealer staff to be shown the door
ING’s dealer groupsTandem Financial AdviceandRetireInvesthave been thrown into disarray with all staff involved in management, compliance and services functions having to reapply for a reduced number of positions.
A source within the group says ING Advice executive director Tony Hartley, RetireInvest general manager George Haramis, Tandem general manager Andrew Doquile and head of shared services Bob Rigon will remain in their roles, but all staff reporting through to the four will be subject to the re-application process.
Staff, including middle management, compliance and administration personnel, were notified of the changes at a staff meeting at the Grace Hotel in Sydney last week, when they were told up to 30 positions would be made redundant.
Of the 20 positions now in Tandem,Money Managementwas told only 10 will remain, with some duties rolled back into the shared services side of the dealer group’s business.
It is believed the moves will not have any impact on ING’s other advisory businesses, Super Concepts and Millenium 3, nor on any of the advisers working in the ING owned dealer groups. At the time of going to press, ING was unavailable for comment.
The move follows the departure of a number of Lynx advisers in August last year, who left after the creation of Tandem.
Those advisers moved to a new dealer group atIOOF, Financial Partnership, set up by former Lynx managing director Stuart Abley who also left over concerns about the structure of Tandem.
Tandem is the second merger of groups within ING in the last four years and it brought together AustAdvisers, Lynx and Partnership Planning, which was formed out of a merger of Adviser Investment Services (AIS) and Bleakleys in 2000.
The two mergers have also resulted in an ongoing exodus of advisers from the ING owned groups, with Tandem reporting only 72 advisers in this year’sMoney ManagementTop 100 Dealer Group Survey, down from 281 in 2002 and from a position of 417 planners across the component groups in 1999.
In 2001, Partnership Planning, Lynx and AustAdvisers boasted similar numbers of planners with 274 between them, while Bleakleys and AIS boasted 374 before their merger in 2000.
However, RetireInvest has been more stable with its numbers moving within the range of 230 to 290 planners over the last five years.
AUTHOR
Jason Spits
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