St George planners in push for greater banking links

By George Liondis

THE new chief of St George bank’s financial planning network will aim to forge closer links between its 100-plus advisers and the bank’s retail banking arm.

David Gall, who took over as the head of St George’s branch-based planners last week, said the bank had failed to take full advantage of its large customer base to distribute wealth management products through its branches.

“I think there is a lot of upside left in our business,” he told Money Management.

“There are a lot of opportunities for us to have a better conversation with our customers. We have an enormous number of retail customers that have very few products from St George.”

As well as overseeing St George’s planners, Gall will be responsible for its retail branches, automatic teller machines and mobile home lenders when he officially takes over as the bank’s group executive of retail business in March.

However, Gall, who has been with the bank for 15 years, will not have responsibility for the bank’s third-party dealer group, Securitor Financial Group.

Securitor, by far St George’s largest distribution network with some 440 financial advisers, will remain under Paul Fagan, the bank’s group executive of wealth management.

The bank shifted responsibility for its branch-based planners from the wealth management to the retail business division in October last year.

The division was initially managed by Andrew Thorburn, who left St George to join the National Australia Bank’s retail banking arm late last year.

Gall, who was previously the head of sales and distribution for St George’s corporate and business banking division, said he would push for greater alignment between advisers and the bank’s other business channels.

“I suppose this is really the culmination of what we did last year when we recreated the broader distribution network as part of the retail banking business,” he said.