PIS aligns with mortgage brokers

Professional Investment Services (PIS) is aligning its business closer to the mortgage broking space through a joint venture with franchise company Refund Home Loans.

PIS chief executive Robbie Bennetts said the arrangement was “a great opportunity to support Refund and to take advantage of the impressive volume of loans they currently write”.

Refund Home Loans is creating a new financial advisory business with the assistance of PIS. Under the arrangement, the group will add PIS’ financial planning products to its existing home mortgage products available to clients.

The company’s executive chairman, Wayne Ormond, said this was the first step in a strategy to introduce an “integrated and full service financial planning division”, with an initial focus on offering life and income protection insurance advice.

Refund Home Loans director Philip Ezzy will head the group’s financial planning division. Ezzy said while the initial focus of Refund Financial Planning would be on insurance, “as our advisers develop their qualifications we will become a full service financial planning business”.

“Refund Financial Planning advisers with RG 146 [qualifications] will be able to give risk advice and start building their client base from the outset. As they increase their qualifications they will be able to extended advice to their existing and new clients and progressively build their own financial planning practice.”

The group said it had already appointed a number of qualified financial planners and is looking to recruit accountants and bankers who want to become financial planners.

Ormond said PIS was chosen for its “expertise, scale, risk capabilities” as well as its geographic reach, with Refund Home Loans servicing clients from close to 300 franchises across Australia.

“We also share similar business philosophies,” Ormond said.