Premium counts its blessings

The creation of a new accountant-based dealer group last year caused a whirl of publicity as some big names struck out on their own. Kate Kachor looks at their progress six months down the track.

A little more than six months ago, financial executive Lewis Waters made a risky decision. Tired of his surroundings at Count Wealth Accountants and his status within the group, Waters gathered a number of colleagues and departed to start his own dealer group.

The new dealer group, Premium Accounting Group was formed by the merger of 10 former Count Wealth Accountant firms. The group included three of Count's top 10 business writing firms and seven from Count's top 50.

Despite the number of departures, Waters describes the parting with Count as "amicable".

"When we left, Count managing director Barry Lambert sent out a letter to each of the departing adviser's clients giving them the choice to follow their adviser or be allocated another adviser," Waters says.

Waters says Count was a very good dealer group for accountants starting up in financial planning. All of the practices that broke away had moved on from their teething stages and were ready to venture forth on their own.

"There were also issues of ownership when we were asked to pay fully for the shares in the dealer group and there was no discount," Waters says.

"We believed we could set up our own dealer group and outsource the research, compliance and software."

It is now six months on, and if Waters is having any reservations about the split, he is hiding it well. Since December last year, Premium has appointed its first managing director, Helen Bridgewood, and is currently in the process of screening a number of potential practices that are keen to join the fold.

Bridgewood joined Premium in December last year. With more than 10 years experience in the financial planning industry, she has held executive positions at Bridgeport and Godfrey Weston.

"The world of a dealer is something quite different than an individual financial planning business. I came from a large dealer group, Godfrey Weston in those days, and it was over 100 proper authority holders, heading to 200," Bridgewood says.

"I came from a large dealer group to Bridgeport, which was a boutique dealer group with the one site. I have seen the world from two different sides, and Premium is somewhere in between the two," she says.

Despite the group's infancy, it has already signed three more accounting and financial planning groups. This year Premium signed Sydney-based Judd Financial Services, Hart Larwill and Partners and Melbourne-based accounting group Charlwoods.

"We're not actively ringing up firms. Firms are ringing us all the time. Our dealer group is growing slowly and is manageable," Waters says.

"It's been a nice steady situation where firms are just coming on now. We have spoken to about 25-odd firms, and we've probably knocked back about 20 of those because they didn't meet our criteria," he says.

Waters says Premium's criteria requires that all groups be Certified Practicing Accountants (CPA) or Chartered Accountants and have $20 million in funds under advice with at least five years experience.

At present, Premium has 39 advisers with more than 5,000 clients.

According to Waters, the structure of Premium is based on fee-for-service, with rebates on commissions. He says there is no client profile, with members free to target any group as their ideal client.

"Our planners are not employees or franchisees of the dealer group. Planners are either principals or employees of member firms," he says.

"Each of these firms has a service agreement with the dealer for the provision of services such as research, software, technology and prudential compliance."

Other services Premium provides for its clients includes taxation, accounting, auditing, finance and leasing, negative gearing, superannuation, personal and risk insurance and workers compensation management.

Waters says the company's research is partly outsourced to InvestorWeb and Morningstar. He says compliance is also partly outsourced through Accent, with planning software provided by Visiplan.

Premium management keeps in contact with its member firms through quarterly full day conferences held in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. The sessions are supplemented, throughout the year, by breakfast sessions and half-day training sessions and software support groups.

This level of contact is highly valued. Bridgewood says she spent most of her first month with the group visiting its member practices, a duty that is crucial to the group's development. The interstate visits also give Bridgewood an opportunity to introduce herself as well as the group's new software program, Visiplan, to the advisers.

"I have been spending a day or half a day with our member practices. The visits gives the advisers a more personal view of the dealer group," Bridgewood says.

"We want to know what is happening in each individual practice, what they need and what we can do."