Reason for switching has been lost: BT
In the "noise" around how many Count Financial practices have transitioned over to BT groups and under what arrangements, the reasons practices switch licensees at all seem to have been lost, according to BT's general manager of advice Mark Spiers.
Money Management last week reported on rumoured "sign-on fees" being paid to Count Financial practices that switched to BT.
However Spiers yesterday contacted Money Management to say the transitions were simply part of the overall picture.
Financial planners had recently experienced a "perfect storm" of disruption due to events such as the GFC and ongoing European contagion wreaking havoc with markets, as well as significant regulatory overhaul, he said.
"That has created a level of dislocation and the fracturing of markets and many relationships. What we're doing in terms of our growth strategy, we've been building out and delivering our capabilities, products, services, and our offering to planners in order to have them in a position to be able to best serve their clients," Spiers said.
"There's been a lot of focus on Count, but our strategy is to grow in the marketplace," he said.
Spiers said that as an industry leader, BT had received enquiries from a significant number of practices.
"Many planners and practices are proactive themselves and do their own due diligence on markets and players," he added.
"As things change in practices, as over time if the business is not growing at the rate they want it to grow, then they come back into the market to look at how they can best align themselves for a partner to help them," he said.
Spiers said so far eight Count practices had switched to BT, and the only money BT paid to those practices was transitional.
"We don't take an equity position or invest in practices, we don't want to erode the owner driver and shareholder incentive to grow the business, so any support we provide businesses has purely been of a transitional nature - that's consistent with what's in the industry," he said.
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