Mentor gears for growth
Mentor Australia Financial Planning will revamp its planner remuneration model as the group gets ready to expand its Sydney presence and make a number of acquisitions in Melbourne.
The dealer group was established by the Credit Union Australia (CUA) earlier this year and already has 10 planners based in Queensland.
It will, from July, add planners to the Sydney market where CUA has seven metropolitan branches.
The advisers will be based in the branch network according to Mentor head of financial planning Paul Geisel, with a shift in the way planners are remunerated from salary only to commission based options.
Geisel says the moves will not affect all planners and all new remuneration options will have a practice buyback component.
“We could have planners working on more of a commission basis — we’re just looking at doing things a bit smarter, not harder, and it will give our existing planners a lot more options,” he says.
The new model will also be applied to those groups that come onboard as part of negotiations currently underway to purchase a number of businesses in Melbourne.
“We’re on the acquisition trail for the banking side and the financial planning side, so that will be finalised later this year,” Geisel says.
The deals are expected to be concluded as Mentor also pares down its use of platforms, with four currently in use within the group —Australian Skandia’s Skandia One,ColonialFirstChoice,Norwich Union’s Navigator andBridges Financial Services’ master trust The Portfolio Service.
CUA is Australia’s largest credit union and the credit union movement, through Credit Union Services Corporation (CUSCAL), has long been associated with Bridges, which was previously owned by CUSCAL.
Geisel says Mentor will discontinue the use of two of the platforms and retain two in order to diversify investments but also maintain a level of competition between service providers.
Mentor originally began operations under a dealer’s licence fromABN AMRO Morgansbut has since shifted to its own Australian Financial Services Licence.
“The transition was good from an ABN AMRO point of view, but even though we started it late last year, we had quite a few difficulties in getting the details to fund managers. It took some four or five months to get everything recorded properly, which was a bit disappointing but a learning experience,” Giesel says.
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