A desire to be unhindered by conflicts and sales targets led to a partnered Australian Financial Services (AFS) licensing approach at MultiForte Financial Services.
The Sydney-based business has a head office in the central business district and a satellite location in the northern beaches suburb of Manly.
Under co-directors Kate McCallum and Tony Clark, MultiForte is partnered with another boutique firm, Financial Masterplan. This practice holds the AFS license and is headed by Nigel Janson.
“We run completely independent businesses, but we share compliance frameworks, it leverages some economies of scale in terms of professional indemnity insurance and investment research,” says Kate McCallum, director and adviser of the Sydney-based full service financial planning business.
“We were looking at different licensing options. My key criteria were I didn’t want to be put in a position where I had a sales target or a requirement to use the firm’s Managed Discretionary Account, for example.”
McCallum’s high-integrity approach to financial advice was formally recognised last month, when she was awarded the Female Excellence in Advice Award at the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) conference in Cairns – something she says came as a pleasant surprise.
Business model
At the time the business was co-founded around seven and a half years ago, its fee-for-service remuneration model across investment, superannuation and life insurance advice was more unusual than it is today.
This directly influenced McCallum’s decision to opt for self-licensing. She explains they had decided to grow the business organically, without buying a book of clients.
“We wanted to attract people who valued that as a model rather than having to transition them,” McCallum says.
“I didn’t ever want to be in a position that if I don’t recommend something, I won’t get paid. It was around feeling that what we did was high integrity and because…I don’t want to have to sell a product in order to be remunerated.
Limited client base
A strictly limited number of clients also underpins MultiForte’s strategy, with its owners deciding to service no more than 100 clients concurrently. These are shared equally between McCallum and Clark.
The business also carefully vets its potential clients, selecting only those they feel they can add considerable value to.
“It’s an exceptionally personal relationship. If that dynamic’s not there, I’d much rather say ‘I’m not ideal for you’ but I recommend other advisers that I know who might be a better fit, either from a personality or a skills and specialisation point of view,” McCallum says.
McCallum focuses predominantly on clients in the accumulation phase, while her business partner specialises in business owners.
Complimentary skills
McCallum explains the decision to work together was more about their differences than similarities.
“Tony and I have very different ways of thinking. He’s very entrepreneurial and big picture. I would say I’m still strategic, but I’m much stronger on process,” she says, seeing these as an ideal mix of skills in the current environment.”
“We’ve taken a view that there is a segment of people we work very well with. We define this by what we know that segment will find most valuable.
McCallum says when she looked at traditional advice practices, many of them were focused on retirees.
“I felt there was an opportunity to come into a space in the market around the accumulators. People who were time poor, had some level of complexity but needed a personal chief financial officer role, someone who could handle the financial side of their world, and provide a system for making good decisions.”
