RSA rolls out new dealer, wrap and name

Royal & SunAlliance will roll out a new dealer group and wrap account later this year as part of its ongoing plans to further integrate and expand its current range of operations.

The move comes as the group begins its first day under a new brand, Royal & SunAlliance Financial Services (RSAFS), aimed at bringing together its five areas of operations.

Chief executive officer Dennis Fox says details of the new dealer group are still being tightly held as the group waits for the final sign off on the Financial Services Reform Bill (FSRB).

The wrap account will be rolled out after the dealer group has been in operation for about three months and is slated for a first release in the new year.

“There is still room for another functional product. There are still market gaps and with distribution we really have to have a wrap account as part of our product offering,” Fox says.

The group will be headed up by Ian Lewis who is currently the NSW sales manager for RSA who have also recruited Peter Jowett as head of distribution.

Jowett was previously the head of Victorian financial planning operations with the Bank of Melbourne and will also oversee Cameron Walshe, which RSA pruchased two months ago on top of having responsibility for third party distribution.

Fox says he is not ready to release further details about either of the new offerings including names and the number of planners in the new group.

However, he says RSAFS licenses about 1500 life advisers and expected a number of them may come across to the new dealer group as a result of the licensing changes involved with the FSRB.

In the past 12 years RSAFS has bought and integrated 17 separate businesses of various sizes and business cultures and Fox says these have mainly been focussed on the independent intermediary.

He says the new dealer group and the name change have been driven by the growth in the suite of products RSAFS has on offer, and the growth of the business means that none of these operations should be regarded as small scale anymore.

“We can’t survive in the market with a loosely held group. The new RSAFS model covers the sales, operations and distribution of the group while showing the entity which is behind each of the business strands,” Fox says.

Under the new model RSAFS will continue to promote five core business names and offerings. These will be Connelly Temple for superannuation, Guardian Trust for trustee services, Life Risk which is the result of combining the SunAlliance and Tyndall risk operations in October last year, Optimim for master trust services and Tyndall for funds management.

“People place faith in what we do so we aim to be a market leader. So far in the last few years we have merged the businesses, the new name is about trying to merge the mindset of people who deal with us,” Fox says.