Financial planning licensees need to boost their individual profiles, partly in response to the Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) reforms, according to the head of National Australia Bank-owned licensee Meritum Financial Group.
Speaking about his own organisation, Stephen Trist, general manager of Meritum, said: “We’re in an environment where there’s other licenses within the bigger bank, and internally I think it’s important that we actually build our profile a little bit more than we have.”
In addition to Meritum, one of the smaller practices in the group, NAB owns MLC Financial Planning, Garvan Financial Planning, Apogee and Godfrey Pembroke.
“I’m not saying we’re going to get up on the rooftops…but I do think it’s not actually been widely known [who we are] by that many people.
“It will come out with FoFA, that licensees do actually need to build their brands more,” Trist explains.
“FoFA is actually about the licensee taking a whole lot more responsibility, and the adviser really representing that license.”
He believes the increasing level of consumer engagement by licensees is also driving this imperative to promote their own brand more.
“And then you overlay consumerism…I think that whereas a license was seen very much as a back office function, research lists…I think that it’s got a much greater responsibility now to build its profile to the consumer, which helps the adviser.”
“Everything that we actually provide, even though it’s to the adviser, it’s only so they can then provide it to the consumer. I do think that is one thing Meritum needs to do is probably profile itself a bit more, for those reasons.”
“It’s not to win the awards, [but to get secondary recognition amongst consumers more than we do right now. It’s hard with a limited budget, but I think we’ve got to have a greater concentration on that,” Trist adds.
He laughingly complains they’re often mistaken as a developer of apartment buildings, given the phonetic similarities of the words “Meriton” and “Meritum”.
Capitalising on bank connections
“The other thing that I think we can concentrate more on, it’s hard to do, but I do think that there are more banking services that we can provide to the advisers on a B2B level,” Trist says.
For example, he expects they could build stronger relationships between advisers and small business customers at a business banking level.
“If we’re that midpoint that’s really sharing with the bank, that we think there’s some really good business there with a really good track record and directional focus over the long term, then we should really be giving that overlay to the bank, and then embracing it to come up with some good structured finance for these guys,” he says.
“From a client point of view, again it’s that holistic viewpoint that the bank is also a life insurance company, a dealer group, it’s got salaried advisers and self employed advisers.”
“The touch points to the consumer are more than just Meritum to the adviser and consumer, there’s no doubt there’s a banking connection to the consumer and there’s a life insurance connection to that consumer.
“But it’s probably the biggest problem all these big companies have got is that they’ve actually realised that Mr and Mrs Jones have got six relationships with this broader group and we need to manage that and reward them better,” Trist adds
Asked whether he will be looking to better capitalise on Meritum’s bank backing, he says: “yes…consumers should be serviced and recognised better, because they’ve probably got three or four relationships with the broader financial services company, not just a bank.”
