In its FY2023–24 results, the firm said net profit after tax (NPAT) was $7.8 million, an increase of $1.5 million on the previous year, while net revenue increased to $36.1 million.
The revenue improvement was driven by the acquisition of Queensland advice business Financial Advice Matters (FAM) in December 2023 and organic licensee fee growth that offset legacy investment margin run-off.
FAM offers a range of financial planning and advice services to over 1,450 clients with funds under advice in excess of $1 billion from eight offices.
Adviser fees were $1.6 million driven by adviser growth through recently acquired advisers transitioning to full rate card during the year.
The firm said it has 549 authorised representatives, an increase of 38 on the prior year. The self-licensed business finished the year with 203 firms and 825 advisers, which represented growth of 22 new firms over the year.
It currently sits as Australia’s fourth-largest licensee but will rise to third position upon the completion of AMP’s exit from advice at the end of the year.
“A continued focus on growth in new client service revenue, combined with operating efficiency improvements when integrated with the Centrepoint Group, has resulted in FAM’s earnings contributions exceeding initial expectations,” the firm said.
The board declared a final dividend of 1.75 cents per share.
Outlook
The outlook for FY24–25 is formed around five strategic pillars of:
- Growing licensed and self-licensed advisers.
- Growing salaried advisers.
- Building scale in asset management.
- The launch of a superannuation and investment platform.
- Growth in lending.
It particularly flagged organic growth from advisers looking to switch licensee over the next 12–18 months with 6–7 per cent of advisers switching each year, equating to around 1,000 advisers.
Its new investment platform, IconIQ, is slated to go live in October 2024 and will provide advisers with an “easy-to-use feature-rich platform at a very competitive price”, using FNZ technology.
Outlining its rationale behind the launch, it said: “The platform market is attractive and modest penetration of our advice network can drive significant funds under advice. Independent platforms are growing at the expense of institutional players [and] platform providers trade at significantly higher multiples than pure play licensees.”
Having recently joined an AFSL who use thjis mob, I have been considerably underwhelmed. Their templates (i.e. risk profiles and fact finds) are riddled with typos, their research team hasnt yet called me back from a week ago and their APL is based on Morningstar who are hugely biased in their ratings and who refuse to rate a large portion of very large FUM and liquid LIC’s, ETF’s, etc. Lucky I’m pretty self sufficient, but my AFSL using these guys is not a “win”, it actually probably will negatively my NPS rating of my AFSL.