Separately managed account (SMA) provider Hub24 announced its intention to acquire the boutique advice group yesterday.
Speaking to ifa, Mr Knox said he had been reviewing the SMA market for the past couple of years, adding that the investment vehicles are a “logical” fit for Paragem advisers.
“The difficulty we have had in the industry is everybody who enters into an arrangement with a supplier ends up becoming a distributor of that,” he said.
Many players are attempting to enter the SMA market but Hub24 is “already there”, said Mr Knox.
“Paragem has a matching client base and Hub24 have got an offering for the market, and rather than become a distributor for them we agreed to merge the business through an acquisition,” he said.
While Hub24 does have a superannuation product, Mr Knox said it will not restrict the investment choices of Paragem advisers.
“You can pick a managed fund or you can pick direct shares, it is your choice,” he said.
“[Hub24] doesn’t have an APL conflict with investment managers that are in-house, and it doesn’t have product manufacturing of investment or insurance,” said Mr Knox.
“What you have is two independently owned entities getting together, and both parties envisage Paragem being a good landing pad for IFAs for future years.”
They will have choice of investment option but not platform I would guess. Any platform provider that buys a dealer group is doing so to get scale on their platform. I don’t see anything wrong with that as platforms are becoming a commodity. You could almost argue that active managed funds are becoming commodities as well, particularity Australian!Which makes the noise around conflicted advice seem redundant.