AMP’s former chief marketing officer will lead Insignia Financial’s advice channel under a sweeping restructure announced by new CEO Scott Hartley on Thursday.
The changes mark the dawn of the Hartley era at Insignia as the business is organised into four distinct reporting lines: advice, management, superannuation/master trust, and platforms.
Hartley tells Professional Planner the refreshed operating structure will drive efficiency and growth at Insignia.
“Both of which is greatly needed going forward,” Hartley says.
“The new execs have strong data and AI experience in building digital capabilities in businesses. Importantly, the appointments with the existing executives are going to create the right balance between to transform Insignia into the future back a leading position into the industry.”
AMP’s former chief marketing officer Renee Howie has been appointed chief customer officer, with a commencement date to be determined.
Howie will have responsibility for advice and marketing, creating a continuum of brand awareness, customer engagement, guidance, through to comprehensive advice.
Howie had been in her role at AMP since November 2021, and also had executive experience at Optus, Commonwealth Bank, PwC, BlackRock and Macquarie Bank.
She is one of three AMP executives that are joining Insignia, but Hartley says the hires were the result of an independent selection process.
“I’m not inclined to be wanting to take people out of AMP, so let’s deal with the elephant in the room, it’s not my shtick,” Hartley says.
“I want AMP to do well, I’m still a shareholder of course. I was hesitant, [Howie] was offered the chief marketing officer role at a major bank and asked me to be a referee, at which we point I went ‘we need to have a different conversation’.”
The CEOs of licensees Shadforth and Bridges, Terry Dillon and Nathan Stanton, respectively, will report to Howie.
“I will still remain close to those businesses myself, but it makes sense from the point of view of the continuum of promoting the brands of the organisation be they Shadforth, Bridges, MLC – all the way through to engaging customers, providing guidance, limited advice from within the super funds all the way to comprehensive advice,” Hartley says.
“That continuum makes a lot of sense to hang together.”
Hartley says Insignia still intends to hold onto its minority stake in Rhombus Advisory, where he remains on the board, which officially separated from the organisation at the start of the financial year.
“There might be another partner that wants to get engaged with that business, that might want to acquire some of our shares to take a position in that business; we’re open to that, but the intention is to hold onto that minority stake,” Hartley says.
Mark Oliver, who had been running distribution across wrap, master trust and asset management, will depart as his role will be broken up between the individual business lines.
“We’re running four quite different businesses that have very different markets and very different customers,” Hartley says.
“At the moment it’s hard for our executive team to focus on those market segments because we’re looking at the market at a broad way. If you want to compete and win you need to be focused.”
Hartley says these different divisions will corner competition in different parts of the market, noting the difference competing with platforms or super funds.
“For example, in wrap, we’re focused on beating HUB24, Netwealth and AMP, [etc.]. In the master trust part of the business, we need to complete with ART, with AussieSuper, Aware – very different basis of competition, very different client,” Hartley says.
“Wrap is all about advisers; you have to look out for the [end] client, but the advisers make the call. The master trust is a consumer direct acquisition model…the largest churn in the market is actually individuals choosing directly themselves which super fund to join.”
Insignia Financial’s registrable superannuation entity board (RSE) also appointed former AMP superannuation trustee executive Sharon Suan to the role of chief member officer, commencing on 29 July and reporting to the chair of the RSE board.
A CEO for the superannuation arm has been appointed but will be announced later, with Hartley saying this will be made public towards the end of the month.
Jason Sommer, who had been at AMP since mid-June 2021 and before that spent seven years at Sunsuper where he also overlapped with Hartley, has been appointed as chief operating officer starting from 22 July.
“It’s not really a typical operations [role] as such,” Hartley says, clarifying the role will have a key hand in the transformation of the master trust business.
“There are some enterprise functions that will sit in there like remediation, external dispute resolution and other specialist services that need to support various parts of the business.”
As noted during his fireside chat at the Professional Planner Licensee Summit last month, transforming the master trust division was the key priority.
Insignia has four super funds – MLC Master Key, Plum Super, OneAnswer and Smart Choice – which it aims to consolidate with a two-to-three-year timeline anticipated for completion.
“That’s unfinished business for us,” Hartley says.
“We currently have four different super funds, we have four different operating platforms and we need to consolidate those to a single operating platform.”
Insignia will also appoint a chief technology officer, with current chief operating and technology officer Frank Lombardo departing as part of the transition to the new structure. Lombardo’s role will be split up, but he will stay on until the CTO is appointed.
“Frank decided on his own volition that it was time to transition out, but he said in the process of doing that he wants to support the transition of the organisation to the new structure and help on-board the new executives,” Hartley says.
Liz McCarthy has been appointed chief executive of MLC Expand, commencing 29 July, with responsibility over the wrap business.
These new appointments will join the existing leadership team comprised of chief financial officer David Chalmers, MLC Asset Management CEO Garry Mulcahy, chief people officer Mel Walls, chief risk officer Anvij Saxena, chief legal officer Lawrence Hastings, and group company secretary Adrianna Bisogni.
