Earlier this week the dealer group announced that it had inked a referral relationship with brokerage firm Advantedge Financial Solutions to assist advisers to cope with reduced revenue, which could occur as a result of the Life Insurance Framework.
Speaking to Risk Adviser, Synchron director Don Trapnell said that this arrangement will be able to act as an additional source of revenue as Advantedge will pay Synchron advisers for each client referral made.
“The reason we came to the relationship with Advantedge was that we did not want to bring our advisers away from what we currently do,” he said.
“If they already have a relationship with a mortgage facilitation service or a finance broker then [they can] keep that relationship – we do not want to change it. Or, if they are already doing it themselves we do not want to change that.
“But if they don’t have such a relationship, we would like them to consider using this facility we have negotiated. The purpose of it is to add money to their pockets.”
Mr Trapnell said the decision to establish the relationship with Advantedge came down to the business not owning financial planning or risk distribution.
“They, therefore, can sign a contract that says they cannot cross market to Synchron clients,” he said.
“With Advantedge they are all salaried advisers, there are no advisers within Advantedge that run their own businesses and, therefore, have an incentive to cross market and that was a big plus for us.”
Mr Trapnell added that he was unable to disclose how much an adviser would be paid for each referral.
In addition to the referral relationship, the risk specialist dealer group announced it has recently launched a new software package – called SyncAdvsr – which will allow its advisers to “reduce the amount of work” they have to do to maintain their business.
In a statement issued by the dealer group, Synchron said it will make a “six-figure annual investment” into the software, which automatically generates fee disclosure statements, opt-in notices and monitors the returns of those notices.
“It also incorporates business analytic metrics which group commissions and/or fees received per adviser, per life company and per fund manager. Additionally, the SyncAdvsr software automatically calculates and produces commission and fee split statements for referral sources such as accountants, general insurance brokers and finance brokers,” the statement said.
It should have also been noted in the article that this is NOT just about lining advisers pockets. It’s also about assisting our clients to make sure they have the right lending facility in place at the most competitive rates subsequently saving them money and providing them with a better deal.
By helping the clients achieve this, we as Synchron advisers are remunerated accordingly.
The media just loves talking about how we are only in it for our own financial gain – that is not the case.