Ipac maintains growth-by-acquisition plans

Ipac Securities remains on the acquisition trail after yesterday reaffirming its continuing efforts to become a national business and could announce a series of developments in this area when AXA releases its half-year results on August 6.

Despite an understanding that some deals are in the process of being struck both Ipac and AXA executives remain tight-lipped. Ipac director Arun Abey says the group is continuing to look for acquisitions, but will not be drawn on targets for the group.

“With AXA’s help we will be making our business national while also acquiring third-party financial planning firms through acquisition. It is a significant growth area for us and will [only] involve financial planning businesses that want to be acquired,” he says.

Abey says any acquisitions will operate under an aggregation and integration model and will not just involve Ipac buying groups for the sake of it.

“The IPAC model is not a consolidation model as that doesn’t work,” Abey says.

Additionally, recent moves that have seen financial planners break way from institutional-owned dealer groups does not concern Abey.

“We have seen very few financial planners leaving Ipac in our 21 years of business. The industry is cyclical and we will see breakaways, especially from the bank-owned groups, as entrepreneurial advisers want to run their own businesses,” he says.

AXA Australia chief executive officer Andy Penn says the demand for quality advice is going to be a driving force in financial planning in the future and that was behind the company’s acquisition of Ipac.

“Financial advice will be at the heart of the industry and that is why we wanted Ipac - as we believe it is at the cutting edge of quality advice.”

Abey sees financial planning as being the second-most important profession after medicine over the next 20 years.

“But the biggest challenge will be finding out what are the financial expectations of people,” he says.