One year on at CFS

Richard Nunn arrived at Colonial First State (CFS) in mid-2003 having transferred from IOOF, and wasted no time in revamping the fund manager’s retail distribution capabilities with a restructure of how the group pitched itself to potential clients.

“When I first arrived there were a number of areas I felt we needed a little more focus, especially in the way we serviced our master funds and our retail distribution areas, as there was overlap in the way we were operating,” Nunn says.

The restructure resulted in the group putting in place a team that was responsible for research, national accounts and master funds.

“All I have done is take some of the business development managers (BDM) out of our retail distribution area and put them in key account roles,” he says.

Nunn says the main reason for making the changes was that the market had shifted over the past few years to become much more focused on model portfolios and blends and with less focus on discretionary menus per se.

“Dealer groups, in trying to manage their business risk, are much more prescriptive about how they want their advisers to use platform menus these days.

“We had really good exposure across most of the discretionary platforms, but we hadn’t done enough work to position ourselves in model portfolios and blends, and also we had a range of other products that we hadn’t done enough work with research houses,” Nunn says.

He says that most of CFS’s competitors in the platform space have dedicated sales teams around the country pitching their products directly to advisers.

“About six months in [after joining CFS], we began looking at our platform strategy and FirstChoice sales — while we had been extremely successful — we were finding it hard to get it to grow,” he says.

As a response to this, at the beginning of the year CFS established a platform sales team of its own.

The new BDMs included former AXA national client service manager Sally Collins, who assumed the role of FirstChoice national sales and development manager, former Garrisons national BDM, Jason Jones, who became responsible for Victoria, and former Commonwealth Bank planner Timothy Meggitt, who joined as New South Wales BDM.

Meanwhile, former Asgard BDM Tony Petroccia takes on responsibility for South Australia, former Macquarie Wrap BDM Suzanne McCouaig is looking after Queensland, while former Sealcorp BDM Ben Coombe is focusing on Western Australia.

“The reasoning behind establishing a dedicated team was also that first and foremost we are a fund manager and I didn’t want to have our investment BDMs being distracted from that side of the business, and therefore felt it was important to have two streams of BDMs.”

As for FirstChoice itself, it was relaunched in May bringing a reduction in fees, the addition of 12 new investment options — including boutiques — and the addition of a range of enhanced service tools.

Earlier last month, Colonial First State also launched a wholesale version of FirstChoice, which now has more than $7 billion under administration on the retail side.

The wholesale version is available to investors with $100,000 and has no entry or exit fees, with a similar investment menu to FirstChoice retail and access to around 65 investment options.

The cheapest price on the platform will be 0.3 per cent for fixed interest products and up to 1.2 per cent for international equities, with investments, superannuation and pension products all available under the new structure.