Tandem – when less is more

When it comes to the size of dealer groups, the war between ‘bigger is better’ and ‘less is more’ continues to be waged.

Tandem Financial Advicegeneral manager Andrew Doquile is fighting for the latter following massive changes that have taken place at his dealer group over the past year.

During 2002 and 2003INGwas in consolidation mode, merging the Lynx, Partnership Planning and AustAdvisers dealer groups into Tandem Financial Advice.

In November last year ING unveiled further plans to internally restructure its dealer group operations in order to position Tandem as a boutique group comprising a collection of elite adviser firms.

The figures show a dramatic drop from a collective 281 advisers in October 2002 to 72 advisers in October last year, but Doquile says the group has also “knocked back a lot of advisory firms in the last three months”.

“Tandem was built to be a premium advice brand, and for that to occur you need quality advisers,” he says.

The group is also aiming to hit a new client target market of 30 to 45-year-olds (most likely high-net-worth and fairly aggressive investors) requiring wealth accumulation strategies and complex advice, however, acquiring these clients is a work in progress.

Doquile says from the dealer’s perspective, the strategy is to mitigate risk and allow adviser direction of the group by acting more as a partner with the firms — something not possible with more than 20 to 30 firms. Doquile says while Tandem currently consists of 40 firms with around 70 advisers, it is likely that by the end of this year the figure could be 30 firms with 80 to 90 advisers.