Charles Black will join Sunsuper as a Queensland BDM, while Gerard Bailey will be a NSW BDM, the fund said in a statement.
Both will join from Colonial First State – Mr Bailey on 21 January and Mr Black on 29 January.
Sunsuper said the newly appointed BDMs will be responsible for continuing to build within the retail advice channel and grow its membership and funds under management via financial advisers.
“We’re now on over 20 licensee APLs and have close to 3,000 advisers who frequently recommend Sunsuper when they’re advising clients to invest in a high-performing, low-cost superannuation and retirement product,” said Sunsuper executive general manager of growth, marketing and advice, Michael Mulholland.
“Advisers know that Sunsuper is a serious player in the retail advice space and that we’re genuinely committed to supporting them over the long-term. These new appointments are testament to that.”
The appointees will take Sunsuper’s retail advice team to 34 employees.
QSuper said at a conference in 2017 that they were currently working to do the same as SunSuper in a closed room with planners but still nothing yet
I think Mr Mulholland may be selling himself well short when he refers to being on 20 APLs.
Many people in this industry (including the Productivity Commission in their recent report) make the mistake of assuming all licensees have a narrowly defined APL. That may be the case in larger vertically integrated licensees, but most smaller licensees will either have no APL at all, or a very open one which just uses generic descriptions like “any APRA regulated public offer fund”. APLs are not actually compulsory.
Sunsuper (and most other union funds) would be permissable recommendations by several hundred small licensees with broadly defined APLs or no APL. The reason these small licensees don’t recommend union funds more often is they are so difficult to work with. If Sunsuper is breaking the “hostile union fund” mold they should spread the word to the hundreds of small licensees.
Well said, the Industry Funds purposely make Advisers life difficult to get info, no online access to accounts or info, terrible call centres with little knowledge, they completely act as if we are enemy no.1
It’s no accident that advisers (and advised clients) get terrible service from union funds. Many union funds have invested in sophisticated systems and processes to identify financial adviser involvement and put extra barriers in the way.
Sounds like they are the complete opposite to Intrust. They are like getting blood from a stone.
Great work SunSuper
Kudos to Sunsuper for trying to work with advisers in the interests of clients.
It’s a pity so many of the other union funds take the opposite approach and actively try to block and frustrate advisers.