Voluntary administration won’t affect FPG clients
The administrator appointed to Perth-based dealer group Financial Partnership Group (FPG) has stressed that the process being undertaken will have no immediate impact on the advisory firm’s clients.
KordaMentha partner Brian McMaster said: “One of the really important things to note out of all of this is that none of the clients’ money is at risk. We don’t touch the investments, they’re all taken care of by major institutions, and they’re all well away from what we’re doing.”
The licensee for FPG, Godfrey Pembroke, has confirmed the current planners will continue to service their existing clients as normal.
“Godfrey Pembroke will continue to licence the advisers so they can provide their usual services to their customers. We will continue to provide them with whatever support they need to service their clients until the voluntary administrator makes a decision on the best outcome for the business,” Godfrey Pembroke managing director Mark Rantall said.
While the administrator is continuing to trade the business in the interim, the main focus of the task is to find new owners for the group.
“There are a whole range of reasons for that outcome but most of them revolve around FPG not wanting to run the business anymore. It’s got to a point where they’ve said ‘we don’t have the energy or the inclination or the capital to keep going to the next level so it might be better if somebody else takes it on from here’,” McMaster said.
KordaMentha has imposed a timeframe of around two weeks to find a new owner for the business.
“We do want to get this done quickly so that will by definition limit the amount of people that we can talk to because not everybody will be able to act as quickly as we want them to,” McMaster explained.
“We’ve got Christmas coming up and everybody needs some certainty coming into the Christmas break. So we really need to try and get to a point where everybody knows what they’re doing next year,” he added.
Recommended for you
The FSCP has announced its latest verdict, suspending an adviser’s registration for failing to comply with his obligations when providing advice to three clients.
Having sold Madison to Infocus earlier this year, Clime has now set up a new financial advice licensee with eight advisers.
With licensees such as Insignia looking to AI for advice efficiencies, they are being urged to write clear AI policies as soon as possible to prevent a “Wild West” of providers being used by their practices.
Iress has revealed the number of clients per adviser that top advice firms serve, as well as how many client meetings they conduct each week.
