Fitzpatricks Advice Partners has inked a strategic deal with the NSW and Queensland chapters of Entrepreneurs’ Organization, a global business support and networking group, as it looks to grow its relationships with business owners and leaders.
“As a group we’ve made a concerted decision to focus on those target-market segments that have very complex needs and that suit our very unique approach to advice,” The group’s CEO Andrew Fairweather tells Professional Planner.
“I came in as CEO 12 months ago and thought that we ought to be adding additional layers to our network capability by forming strategic partnerships with groups like EO to help our advisers access more of these people given how large the opportunity set is and generally how under-served they are.”
Fairweather says that the segment is typically time poor and needs significant help to organise their financial affairs, given they’re focused “so intently” on growing their business.
“A lot of them do have advisers, but we find most people might have a good accountant, or an estate plan, but the estate plan isn’t linked very tightly to their various trusts or they haven’t involved their children in any of that planning; we find gaps everywhere that we look,” Fairweather says.
“We’re looking to do a number of these types of partnerships so our advisers can help more clients in a segment that needs a lot of help.”
Fairweather started to organise the partnership with EO after finding that a friend was a member of the Perth chapter; state chapters of EO don’t allow more than one partner in any one field of expertise, and Perth already had an existing wealth adviser servicing it, so Fitzpatricks filled the gap in Sydney and Brisbane.
“Ultimately we’d love to do all of Australia, but we have to respect EO’s own internal process, which is very good,” Fairweather says.
“There’s a full program of work; they have forums, industry events, we have boardroom lunches and nine entrepreneurs turned up in our office and two of our advisers presented around business succession and inter-generational wealth.
“If any of the entrepreneurs or business owners want to deal with us they can proactively approach us, but we won’t approach them under the rules of engagement.”
While Fitzpatricks is still “settling in” to the arrangement with EO, Fairweather says he will try multiple “experiments” to see which ones deliver the most value.
“At this stage we’re doubling down on the EO relationship; we’re taking a multi-year view here because when you’re trying to form relationships with people you’ve got to be around for three, five, seven years and people get to trust you over time,” Fairweather says.
“We can’t do too many of these things; just in Sydney and Brisbane alone we’re talking to 350 to 400 entrepreneurs, and the work per entrepreneur is quite extensive if they engage with us. There are capacity issues in terms of what you can do.
“But there aren’t many groups like this around – this was just a very unique opportunity and I think it’s our role as a partner to our advisers to give them opportunities to increase their revenue and help entrepreneurs.”
