Brisbane-based licensee Futuro Financial Services is back on the expansion trail after bedding down the sale of the business to AMP. Dennis Bashford, managing director of Futuro, says that between June 30 and August 31 this year the firm will add 12 authorised representatives, raising the number operating under its licence to 95.
The figure was close to this prior to the company beginning negotiations with AMP. Bashford says Futuro expects to have 115 representatives in a year’s time.
“Before we went to AMP, we went through a clean out and cut back to about 80,” Bashford says.
AMP announced the acquisition of Futuro in early March, initially taking a 10 per cent stake in the business. Futuro’s growth was put on hold while the deal was finalised.
Bashford says Futuro has taken on practices that have left other licensees as well as own-AFSL firms. Most of the new authorised representatives are in Western Australia, with a smaller number in Queensland and “a couple” in New South Wales.
Bashford says it’s no surprise that so many firms are looking for a new licensee, “but the thing that’s surprised us most of all is that they are decent-sized practices”.
“There’s one big practice that’s got five authorised representatives and that’s turning over a couple of million dollars. There’s another that’s got three and that’s turning over $1.3 million to $1.4 million, and we have another one that’s got one [authorised representative] and it’s turning over about $700,000.
“The thing that’s encouraged us is, one, the quality, and two, that they [have come from] across the board – we have not targeted the disenfranchised.
“The people we’re talking to, other than the self-licensed ones, part of the reason they are moving from where they are is there seems to be … a narrowing of the approved-product lists. I think they really do not like that.”
Bashford says Futuro will maintain a relatively open product list, despite AMP’s increasing investment in the business over the coming years.
“Everything we do, we have to do in consideration of the planners, because if the planners do not like it, you’ve got nothing to sell,” he says.
“It was very important to us [in the AMP deal] that we are going to be able to keep many of the fundamental characteristics of the business, and the way we do business.”
