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After Chris Bowen announced on 26 April 2010 new legislation will be introduced affecting commissions, trails, review fees, volume bonuses and upfront fees, Radar Results conducted a poll. Radar Results polled financial planners and other financial service industry people asking “How will Chris Bowen’s new laws (2012) affect your business plans?”

We received 732 responses with more than half suggesting their business plans would be affected by Chris Bowen’s new reforms with more than 1 in 4 respondents leaving or retiring sooner from the financial planning industry.

Some 12 per cent (87 respondents) said they would retire sooner, 14 per cent (101) said they would sell part or all of their business, and 16 per cent (115) said they would leave the industry. Some 44 per cent (324) would not change their business plans as a result of the reforms

Many suggested it would be positive, allowing them to expand and acquire more practices.

Those polled and said the reform laws would not change their business plans totalled 324, or 44% of the responses.

Radar Acquire New Division for Accounting Practices

www.radaracquire.com.au

The group’s operations manager, Michele Conroy, announced a new division will commence this week specialising in the acquisition of accounting practices. The name of the new service will be Radar Acquire.

Conroy said “the demand by Radar’s existing clients to acquire accounting practices has been growing for several years. We see more of our financial planning clients adding accounting practices to their business, and this is a trend that would only continue.”

The group’s managing director, John Birt, has been working with accountants for more than 26 years and he’ll be using his experience to run this new division, Radar Acquire. 

     Office of the Hon Chris Bowen MP
         Minister for Human Services
Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation
               and Corporate Law

THE FUTURE OF FINANCIAL ADVICE
INFORMATION PACK

MONDAY 26 APRIL 2010

To access the Government’s Future of Financial Advice reforms paper. Click on the below link

http://ministers.treasury.gov.au/Ministers/ceba/Content/pressreleases/2010/attachments/036/Future_of_Financial_Advice_Information_Pack.pdf

Message from the Minister

The Government recognises the important role played by financial advisers1 in assisting people to
plan for their future. Longer term challenges such as the ageing of the population, as well as
recent events such as the global financial crisis, underscore the need for quality advice.
It gives me great pleasure to announce significant reforms to the provision of financial advice,
which I believe will improve the quality of advice, strengthen investor protection and underpin trust
and confidence in the financial planning industry. These reforms should ultimately encourage
more people to seek financial advice.
This package represents a comprehensive Government response to the recent Inquiry into
Financial Products and Services in Australia by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on
Corporations and Financial Services (the PJC Inquiry, see Attachment A), which was set up in the
wake of collapses such as Storm Financial and Opes Prime.
In this respect, the Government’s response is guided by two overriding principles:
• financial advice must be in the client’s best interests – distortions to remuneration, which
misalign the best interests of the client and the adviser, should be minimised; and
• in minimising these distortions, financial advice should not be put out of reach of those who
would benefit from it.
The Future of Financial Advice contains three key reforms, which will apply from 1 July 2012:
• A prospective ban on conflicted remuneration structures, including commissions and any
form of volume based payment. In addition, percentage-based fees (know as assets under
management fees) can only be charged on ungeared products or investment amounts.
• The introduction of a statutory fiduciary duty for financial advisers requiring them to act in the
best interests of their clients and to place the interests of their clients ahead of their own
when providing personal advice to retail clients.
• The introduction of adviser charging regime, which retains a range of flexible options for
which consumers can pay for advice and includes a requirement for retail clients to agree to
the fees and to annually renew (by opting in) to an adviser’s continued services.
The reforms also significantly expand the provision of low-cost simple advice (known as intra-fund
advice) to areas including transition to retirement and the nomination of beneficiaries. There will
be a review of whether other measures are needed to clarify whether simple advice can be
provided in a compliant matter outside intra-fund advice.
I welcome the significant efforts of industry, including the Investment and Financial Services
Association (IFSA) and the Financial Planning Association (FPA) to remove commissions. The
reforms clearly support their efforts by introducing enhanced standards that apply across the retail
financial services industry. The reforms will greatly reduce the incidence of investors being
recommended financial products as a result of sales incentives offered to advisers. Clearly, clients
should receive advice that is in their best interests.

Chris Bowen

Minister for Human Services, Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law

1 The reference to the term ‘financial adviser’ in this Information Pack generally refers to those who provide ‘financial
product advice’ under the Corporations Act 2001.

Consulting firm, Radar Results is seeing more sellers of financial practices come to market, particularly larger sized firms.  John Birt, Managing Director for Radar Results said “Currently our clients are looking at purchasing 10 planning practices which should sell for at least $5 million. We have found 5 of these practices since December 2009. ” Mr Birt goes on to say “Owners of Dealerships are also looking to exit the planning industry due to their profits being lower, often into the red. At the moment we have a number of dealerships wanting to talk to our clients about selling.”

The trend for using a consultant or buyer’s advocate commenced in 2005 with Radar Results pioneering the way. Since then a number of buyer advocates have sprung up, all doing very well. Mr Birt believes competition is healthy and often the advocacy firms refer to each other when it’s in the interest of helping a client.

On the flip side, using a broker to sell your business can be a very expensive and unrewarding exercise. Often their process can cause the sale to be delayed; sometimes well over a year expires with no result, not to mention the 5-10% commission you have to pay.

 A good buyer’s advocate will allow their client to meet a suitably matched seller and have the whole deal completed in 1 to 2 months. It’s a private consulting experience that’s offered by Radar to the financial planning industry, rather than a broker flogging a business to all and sundry. A dangerous aspect of this “sell to anyone” mentality is that the staff will find out that you’re selling – since its broadcast everywhere! You then have quality staff leaving to find a safer employer which can affect the sale price. Another downside is the time wasted being introduced to buyers that are not a cultural fit, or matched to your business model.

Radar feels that offering a business to hundreds and thousands of people doesn’t respect the seller or the seller’s clients. It can take you 20 years to build a good client base and many of them (the clients) become friends. Selling them at an auction is like “selling meat carcasses to a butcher”. It’s usually not what planners had in mind when they took that first step towards retirement.  

Radar Results is running a series of Workshops in May and June to address these issues. Workshops are being held in Melbourne and Sydney shortly. Contact Radar’s Operations Manager, Michele Conroy on michele@radarresults.com.au for an invitation.

Insurance registers in high demand

Life insurance registers continue to be in extreme demand from financial planners who wish to expand their business. These registers, commonly called “books of business,” would include life insurance, trauma or crisis cover policies and income protection. To date the main demand has been from capital city based advisers although regional based advisers are also after these types of books.

“One swallow doesn’t make a summer”

Some advisers are now predicting an increase in their recurring revenue of up to 50% for the next few years. It’s nice to be optimistic, but it sounds like 2007 again. It could be a good time to take stock of where your business is currently, and factor in either no increase in revenue, or a fall in revenue due to market downturn. However, one way to guarantee an immediate revenue increase is to buy a client base, as long as the price is right. But what is the “right price” multiple you should pay today?
Recently there’s been publicity surrounding particular acquisition multiples that have been paid to sellers. This publicity can set a dangerous precedent. Advisers, who may be thinking of selling and feel summers here, could be bitterly disappointed by the end of negotiations! Advisers who have wanted to sell their business in the past have used Radar Results to provide them with an appraisal of what it’s worth. Their own price expectation may be based on a recently published “one off “sale result at a high price multiple. The adviser identifies with this sale price multiple, and expects to achieve the same result. What’s that saying; one swallow doesn’t make a summer?
Possibly the high recurring revenue multiple may be influenced due to exceptionally generous terms offered by the seller, like a 5 year payout term. Or the reverse, 100% upfront payment for your business, no transition work offered and no clawback provision which would make the multiple reduce spectacularly. I recall when Radar first provided appraisals, the price paid by our client reduced by over 20% because he offered a purchase price 100% upfront for the financial planning business. 
Setting a high price expectation to attract sellers is almost like a real estate agent desperate get a listing and provides an appraisal that’s totally and commercially unrealistic. At first you believe them, only to find out months later, it’s false. You then find yourself having to accept a far lower price, the salesman still get’s his commission, and he never has to face you (the vendor) again.  This isn’t helping advisers leave the industry in a caring and respectful manner. It also can leave the vendor with resentment from being under-valued, and with a bad taste in their mouth thinking they should have got more for their business. If you’d like an appraisal for your planning business or client register, just click on  Appraisal Questionnaire.
A well priced financial planning business can sell in a few weeks, or even sometimes sooner. For this to happen you must also be located in an area or region where there is high demand, otherwise you may remain unsold for a longer period. Some banks are still not that keen on providing finance associated with the purchase of financial planning practices, and others limit their lending to 1.5x to 2x the recurring revenue, or 75% of 5x EBIT. These limitations have been in place since early 2009 and make the purchaser provide a higher level of cash or security to secure the finance. This has also affected industry prices.

If you’re planning to sell your financial planning business you’ll need to be aware of some obvious and not so obvious deal breakers.  Besides price and terms being the obvious ones, there are some surprises in store for the unwary seller.
If you’re an Authorised Representative of an AFSL and looking to sell, Radar has had buyers come back saying “my dealership is not happy with the compliance of the vendor’s business” or “my dealer doesn’t like the products they’ve been using”.  A seller may impose a deal breaker themselves such as “I’m happy to sell but you must join my dealership”.  Another deal breaker isolated to a vendor’s business that has multiple partners would be the requirement to buy-out one of the partners. This can stop many buyers from getting past first base.

Consultants like Radar Results can introduce sellers to a matched buyer; matched on location, price, terms and business style. Radar may then be able to also arrange an indicative finance approval to see if the buyer qualifies before moving too far into the transaction. Radar also canvasses and identifies trouble spots in a transaction well before they appear.

But there are the less obvious deal breakers If your business is run by a company then the ownership of the clients need to be confirmed.  Are they owned by the adviser, the private company or some other entity, usually a trust?  If the clients are owned by a company, do you want the buyer to acquire the company shares, effectively taking over the company and its responsibilities? Usually the buyer’s answer is no, so the deal stops immediately.
Another deal breaker could be the lease on the vendor’s office. The seller may want the new owner to take on this lease, thus keeping the clients going to the same location, enhancing client retention and passing on the cost to the buyer. Not a problem if the buyer needs an office; likes your office and feels there’s a commercial advantage in taking on the lease. However, often buyers already have their own office and only require your client’s revenue to add to their bottom line. Buying the clients is one thing, taking on a lease is quite another. This can be an instant deal breaker.
Staffing is another possible deal breaker. Often a mature business looking to expand already has adequate staff. The vendor’s push for existing staff or family members working in the business “to go with the business” can be a deal breaker. As well, the retiring adviser may want a salary for several years after signing the contract and depending on how much they ask for, and for how long, can jeopardize the sale. I’ve seen qualified experienced planners ask for as low as $60,000pa and up to $250,000pa.
Within the terms of a sale, a claw-back or rise and fall clause can be negotiated.  A sale without any claw-back provision can cause a buyer to shun the deal day one. Transition of the client relationship to the new owner is usually required by the buyer, and if this is not being offered, the transaction may never start.
As you can see, there’s a lot of information and questions that need to be answered upfront to save time and effort from both the buyer and the seller - and these questions are not always obvious.