ISG to merge into newly formed Centrestone
Investor Security Group(ISG) owner and director Robert Keavney will team up with Malcolm Turnbull to launch a new planning group aimed at the high net worth end of the market.
The group, to be called Centrestone Wealth Management and owned by a group of shareholders, will purchase ISG outright and incorporate it with P&A, a risk insurance business run by Jon Pillemer and Roy Agranat, to form the basis of the group’s planning arm.
P&A has concentrated on the life and risk side of the planning industry and according to Keavney currently holds an insurance portfolio of more than $1 billion.
However the full transition of ISG into Centrestone will still be in the hands of the group’s advisers, who are talking on an individual basis with the new group about their plans.
“The institutions have missed the point in acquiring dealers by failing to recognize that individual planners have the personal relationship with clients. Centrestone has acquired the ISG infrastructure and is now talking to the individual ISG planners,” Keavney says.
Any offers put to the planners will include cash up front and ongoing payments at defined periods and dependent on the long term success of the group planners may also receive a capital bonus.
The planning group will be held by a parent company Centrestone Wealth Management Group, with Turnbull taking on the role of chair and Keavney sharing the role of chief executive with Michael Pillemer.
Keavney will also be chief executive of the financial advisory business, Centrestone Wealth Management, with Pillemer managing the financial planners and other wealth management businesses. Mike Dunne will take on the role of chief operating officer and Russel Pillemer will come onboard as a non-executive director.
Ownership of the group has been divided between around 30 high net worth individuals, some who are clients, with no institutional owners involved in the launch of the group.
ISG’s shift into the group comes six months after it ended its long term relationship with Perpetual after it purchased back a 50 per cent stake the fund manager had held in the planning group for four years.
Keavney says that while the group will target the high net worth end of the planning market it is not looking at high levels of recruitment and says that while the institutional dealers were seeking hundreds of clients it would look at only five to 10.
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