Former Wallaby Phil Kearns has been in the hot seat at Centric Wealth for five months and reflects on industry reform and the road ahead.
After seven years at Investec, Kearns felt the need for a new challenge and started his new role as CEO of Centric in December last year.
The post had been vacant since July 2011 when former chief executive, John McMurdo, and chairman, Philip Kelly, left the wealth advisory firm.
Centric Wealth currently has 65 advisers across various aspects of the business, with Kearns describing them as “ferociously independent”.
He has few gripes with the Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) reforms aside from expressing disappointment that the compliance deadline has been extended to 2013.
“We are quite happy with the FoFA regulations and possibly disappointed that they’ve been extended for a year as this was possibly a nice little competitive advantage for us,” he says.
While Kearns is awaiting the final version of FoFA before positioning Centric definitively he says that, in theory at least, he would happily sign the business up as FoFA compliant immediately.
To watch a short interview with Kearns, click on the video below.
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