Australian financial services firm Insignia Financial has announced that its chief executive officer Renato Mota will step down from the role at the end of February next year.
Insignia confirmed the move, which was made by “mutual agreement”, in an ASX announcement on Friday, in which it said that Mr Mota has been a “key organisational leader” throughout his 20 years at the firm, including the past five years as chief executive officer.
“Over his time with the group, Renato has been instrumental in transforming IOOF and ultimately Insignia Financial into one of Australia’s leading wealth management organisations,” said Insignia Financial chairman Allan Griffiths.
“His ability to create a purpose-led culture and execute a bold strategy in the face of numerous challenges, including a global pandemic, are marks of his outstanding leadership qualities. We wish him well in his future endeavours.”
Mr Mota originally joined Insignia in 2003 and has held a range of positions at the firm including general manager – investor solutions, general manager – distribution, and group general manager – wealth management.
He was named acting CEO in December 2018 after the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) commenced disqualification proceedings against the group’s executives which were later dismissed. Mr Mota was then officially appointed CEO in June 2019.
During Mr Mota’s tenure as CEO, Insignia completed its acquisition of ANZ’s OnePath pensions and investments business and NAB’s MLC wealth management business.
Commenting on his departure on Friday, Mr Mota said that he felt privileged to have been a part of Insignia over the past 20 years and its CEO for the past five years.
“Having established a clear path for the next three years, I feel this is the right inflection point to provide the business with fresh perspective to continue the journey,” he said.
“To have created an industry leader and purpose-led culture, driven by an ambition to improve the financial wellbeing of all Australians, is something I’ll always be proud of.
“I know I will leave behind an incredibly talented and passionate team who will continue to build the organisation for the benefit of all stakeholders. I thank all of our people for their friendship and support and wish them all the very best.”
Mr Griffiths also confirmed that Insignia has begun searching for a new CEO to build on the foundations established by Mr Mota and “continue to execute on the opportunities our market position and capabilities currently represent”.
When will advisers wake up to the fact that product companies are not there to “serve” or “look after” or “partner with” advisers. Product companies are there to sell products. Advisers are just a product sales channel, to be utilised in whatever way suits the product company at any particular time.
Advisers who whinge and moan about how they have been poorly treated by product companies need to reflect on whether they should have gotten into bed with product companies in the first place.
A “The Mark McGowan Syndrome”. Mota has seen the writing on the wall.
Unfortunately Mr mota and his exec team except for one notable exception the ceo of RI built a culture of commercial self interest that Totally ignored the advisers
Perhaps if they would have studied the culture and model at Elders financial planning more which was growing expedentially and had a unique help the adviser culture instead of the fallacy that they weren’t profitable and closing a compliance award winning business down then they wouldn’t be in this situation
Strategically the business lost its way by not engaging with the advisers and empowering them to help shape the future of the business instead of amalgamating business units that were loss making with compliance issues under the guise of strategic alignment (advice model 2
I really do hope the board brings in a new face that has firstly the qualifications at a leadership, culture, compliance and strategy level and gives them a large broom to sweep out an exec team that are not aligned to their advisers
Hopefully the board realises that advisers now have choices and no amount of rose tinted equity stakes will stop an adviser leaving when the culture which starts from the top is not correct
What’s wrong at IFL?
An industry-best advice and advice-support team (at SFG), which, despite its best efforts, finds itself battling constantly against a self-interested culture rotten at the top.
On evidence, Mota is like a hand-wringing version of Alan Joyce, just without the business acumen.
The IOOF business, plus Shadforth, plus acquisitions, each of c$900m, now having a total capitalisation of c$1.3bn, serves as an enduring case study of mismanagement and misaligned priorities.
Having members of the board who are only prepared to hold $20k of shares in a company, from which they draw 10 times that per annum in directors fees, hardly looks like an alignment with shareholders’ interests, nor does the Board’s tardiness to address obvious issues and take action.
Senior levels of HR treat workplace culture as core business – to the exclusion of every other performance measure. Being nice, respectful, inclusive, etc. are worthy hygiene items and should be no less than expected, but they are not what ought be treated as core business: necessary and valuable, but not where IFL, which should be able to ‘walk and chew gum at the same time’ earns its money.
With respect to culture, read Renato’s weekly company-wide catch-ups, in which over 1,000 hours of staff time per week are wasted in finding out his views on the footy or some other non-business related concern. (Inexplicably, there’ll be more of these to endure, in which the self-congratulatory and ‘proud of culture’ comments will be given another airing – again, at the expense of doing any actual business).
Renato, if you must stay until February, why not institute alongside the innumerable ‘theme days’ that have been a feature of your five years of failure, another one: let’s call it ‘Improve the Share Price and Business Value Day’ where everyone dresses in their work gear and does something productive. Maybe we would even have a lot of them…
“To have created an Industry Leader yada yada yada …. “. Seriously, IFL is trading at it’s all time low share price, well below its issue price 20 yrs ago!
The culture is toxic – he should have left 10 years ago as should have the Chairman and the other’s cronies who have been on the gravy train way too long and offered zero strategic benefits to the shareholders, the planners and more imporantly the clients invested.