Incoming Godfrey Pembroke Group (GPG) executive director John Nantes says the board’s decision to appoint him to the role cements its historical “adviser-owned, adviser-led” ethos.
Nantes tells Professional Planner the appointment reflects a deliberate strategic choice to replace outgoing chief executive Mark Fisher with a practising adviser.
Fisher is leaving the business at the end of May after a critical two years during which he led it through extraction from the Insignia Financial group back into adviser ownership, and set up the systems, processes, and partnerships to allow it to stand alone.
Fisher tells Professional Planner that growth is the priority for the incoming leadership, and one that adviser-owners are better placed to pursue than an external executive. “I think growth always works better when the people that are owners and the advisers in the business attract other owners and advisers into the business,” he says.
Nantes says the board faced the strategic choice of “do we go get another CEO to replace Mark, or do we lean in and be purely adviser-owned and adviser-led as a real strategy?”.
“The adviser-owned, adviser-led strategy is the foundation – that is the core to everything we’re doing,” he says.
“If we’re building new processes, if we’re leaning into AI, it’s because it’s adviser-led and owned. The benefit is to the adviser, not some artificial corporate. It is all about making them as great as they can be for their clients. That is the thread underpinning our governance, our growth trajectory, our culture.”
Nantes, a Godfrey Pembroke adviser, business owner, and shareholder in the licensee, has already been on the firm’s board for about 18 months. Germana Venturini, previously chief operating officer, will step into the role of general manager and take on additional responsibilities, including a directorship on the AFSL.
Nantes cut his teeth at Colonial 30 years ago, spent almost a decade at St George running financial planning across New South Wales and later moving into retail and small business banking, and then took over the wealth management business at WHK (later Crowe Horwath).
About a decade ago, he joined Godfrey Pembroke as a financial adviser while simultaneously pursuing a parallel corporate career, running Income Asset Management from zero to around $3 billion in fixed income funds under management (FUM), building a listed lending business, and sitting on the boards of publicly listed and private companies as executive chair or non-executive director.
He says that combination makes the transition to the executive director role straightforward. The GPG role replaces the corporate track of his career, not time in his wealth management practice.
“Do I now go 100 per cent wealth management, or with that capacity, go back to doing more boards? And to be honest, I do love the GPG way.”
His practice serves about 95 high-net-worth clients, typically self-employed professionals, former chief executives, medical practitioners, and dentists. It runs efficiently by design, with a team of three, outsourced paraplanning and technology functions, and a new adviser joining in August.
Oversaw the extraction
Fisher took on the role of running Godfrey Pembroke and the MLC Select licensee business at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, when both businesses were owned by Insignia Financial Group (then IOOF). He oversaw the extraction of the Godfrey Pembroke business from Insignia and its return to adviser ownership.
Fisher believes he leaves the business in good shape. “We’ve had two years now where we’ve had a sparkling, clean audit. We have no complaints, we have no compliance issues, we have no incidents. I believe we’re an extremely well-run licensee.”
Godfrey Pembroke has 26 equity-holding member firms and about 50 authorised representatives. Fisher says that while the licensee does have growth plans, it is currently in a sweet spot.
“We’re at the right size as far as scale goes to be able to provide a full and holistic service to advisers, whilst being able to have a really strong connectivity and boutique-type feel,” he says.
Fisher was appointed CEO when Godfrey Pembroke was still part of MLC, under NAB ownership. The acquisition of MLC by IOOF took place about six months later, and Fisher went with the business. Around a year to 18 months into that period, both parties agreed that Godfrey Pembroke would exit from the IOOF/Insignia group, as Insignia moved to focus on employed advice businesses Shadforth Financial Group and Bridges.
The extraction was a precursor to the creation of Rhombus Advisory, made up of the RI Advice and Consultum self-employed adviser businesses, which followed about six months later.
The first year or so after exiting Insignia was spent rebuilding the business from scratch, Fisher says.
“Historically, we leveraged and sat and worked all our services off the machine. We had to then partner and build our entire model.”
The second year was about getting the business to the point where it no longer needed someone in his role.
“The intent was always to put the business into the advisers’ hands,” he says. “Whether it was in one year, two years, three years, whatever the timeframe was, the intent was always to give control, leadership, strategic direction, everything to the advisers. And so we’re at that point now.”
Four pillars
Nantes says GPG’s priorities are built around four pillars: culture, innovation, governance, and adviser diversity, and the adviser-owned, adviser-led ethos is non-negotiable.
“We build the systems and processes bottom up,” he says. “What do the advisers need? What are their clients telling them? That’s what we build. It’s not top-down.”
The group meets monthly, runs peer forums where practices open the books and share best practice, and is about to introduce a mentoring program pairing established businesses with newer ones. Growth will be selective. Prospective new advisers must meet two or three existing members of the group and the cultural fit has to be there.
“You might be a great adviser, but if the cultural fit’s not there, then we have to be honest about that,” he says.
The group has a dedicated AI champion in a fully resourced role, with a second being recruited, and is working within a defined governance framework for AI use. It is collaborating with an unnamed technology provider to develop a solution covering the full advice workflow, from file note to record of advice to audit, with Nantes describing the collaboration as “a social good” because the resulting product will benefit the broader industry.
JP Morgan has also chosen Godfrey Pembroke as the sole launch partner for a pair of bespoke equity products, and the group is adding direct international equities to its approved product list for the first time, supported by an AI-built internal accreditation system.
The governance pillar is unsexy but essential, Nantes says. The board carries deep experience, compliance is handled by external specialist Three Lines, and the promotion of Venturini to general manager means the group’s operational infrastructure is now female-led.
A new head of compliance role is being created with an explicit brief to drive efficiency through AI, not simply to maintain traditional compliance functions.
Nantes says his years chairing and sitting on boards have taught him two things above all: the value of listening to dissenting views, and the importance of always examining intent when things go wrong.
“If there’s a mistake, what was their intent? If it was a good intent, the mistake is fixable,” he says.
“If you think about somebody who deliberately tries to get around the system, where it went wrong was at the start, their intent wasn’t brilliant. But if their intent was right, and if it’s an admin issue, it’s very solvable.”
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.