State Trustees focuses on stability

The arrival of a new managing director at an organisation often means change, even sometimes change for change’s sake.

Victorian-based State Trustees, on the other hand, appointed a new managing director six months ago with the specific intention of not changing direction. It plans to focus on the niche business it is best known for — estate planning.

State Trustees’ new managing director Libby Lomas, previously the chief executive of the insurance division at the National Australia Bank, has completed her review of State Trustees’ operations and says this is what the organisation is very good at.

“Estate planning, through our expertise in estate management, professional will writing and testamentary trusts, will be the thing for us to focus on,” she says.

State Trustees is owned by the Victorian Government, but was corporatised in 1994 and now operates as a financial services company offering a broad array of services, including financial planning.

State Trustees’ point of difference comes from its historical role of providing trustee services to Victorians. It is the only state government trustee department in Australia to be corporatised and reports to the Department of Treasury in Victoria, rather than the Attorney General’s departments as in other states.

State Trustees is also very profitable. In the financial year ending June 2001, it made an $8.6 million profit, up 20 per cent on the previous year. It has almost $1 billion of funds under management.

The company also plans to focus on estate management, which is an add-on service to estate planning.

“Today, people’s financial affairs are more complicated and it takes more time to settle the estate,” she says.

“If you can get a professional service to manage the estate, the executors will optimise the position and deal with the financial aspects of the will, enabling relatives to concentrate on the family.”

According to the group’s annual report, the company started handling more than 1,300 deceased estates in the last financial year.

State Trustees also has a range of products specially designed for its conservative client base. These range from cash management accounts through to indexed funds managed by Macquarie.

A key element of State Trustees’ business is customer service and Lomas says technology is going to play an important role in boosting that service. State Trustees already offers an online will service with between 600 and 700 wills already completed through the Internet.

Lomas says this service is also bringing good quality referrals to the company.

“We get a lot of referrals from the will service, as people start filling it in and then realise they need some advice,” she says.

Lomas believes State Trustees’ future will come from expanding its core activities, and not going down the acquisition trail.

But she says if an opportunity presented itself the company would look at it.

“I think there is a greater opportunity in focusing on our core business and remaining a niche player rather than trying to be all things to everybody.”