NGS Super has today announced the appointment of Guideway Financial Services as its financial advice partner.
NGS said the fund underwent a tender process to find a provider that would support its future growth strategy, which included catering for an increase in the number of members seeking advice via a number of different channels.
“A key objective in NGS’s growth strategy is to provide members with an omni-channel advice solution which is responsive and agile,” NGS said.
Executive manager, customer, NGS Super, Dascia Bennett said the appointment of Guideway Financial Services has been in the fund’s future roadmap for growth and is part of a wider strategic plan to reach new members and drive customer engagement.
“Our goal is always to help members secure their financial futures. This is achieved by understanding their goals and ensuring that they make appropriate financial decisions to secure their future from a whole of wealth perspective,” she said
“A key part of this is making sure members have access to quality and professional financial advice. The benefits will be significant because this will mean the availability of a more agile, complete and cost-effective financial planning service to members.”
Guideway Financial Services will be providing NGS Financial Planning with a bespoke advice solution using responsive financial planning solutions, NGS said.
Director at Guideway Financial Services Alex Aracas added, “The new partnership will see a cost-effective and scalable service which is supported by strong compliance and technical services.”
NGS Financial Planning expects to complete the Guideway Financial Services solution implementation in early 2017.
So a situation where a member of NGS seeking advice being referred to a adviser who is linked directly to the fund, but that is ‘badged’ differently. Isnt that the same as CBA referring a client to a FinWiz adviser? There’s a pretty high chance the client will end up in a CBA related fund and insurance from Comminsure. Just like a member of NGS referred to Guideway wont be going anywhere but NGS. No bias or conflicts there.
Agreed, Patrick. What the problem seems to be is that people can only see from their own, narrow perspective and they see no conflict of interest where they believe they are right or even justified, whereas the conflict is obvious to anyone looking in from the outside. Australians generally seem to have a weaker grasp of the concept of conflicted interests, often believing that the conflict has to be actual and extant to be real…rather than when it has the potential – and therefore colours “advice” and actions. It took a couple of decades to get to the point where “commissions” have been (almost) wiped out, but simply replaced in many instances with “adviser service fees” still paid by fund managers – effectively a commission by another name! When will our industry get over its fear of charging via invoices and getting paid by the customer? Perhaps more importantly: when are the regulators going to realise what’s happening?
So another vertically integrated relationship. Is this not what the industry funds have been complaining about for years, the conflict of interest between product providers and captured advisers? Forget FOFA, it is nothing more than using advisers as the scapegoat for a systemic cultural deficiency. What this industry needs is for vertical integration to be banned, you must choose between Product provider and Advice provider, you cannot do/own both as the conflict of interest is irreconcilable.