FuturePlus Financial Services has been experiencing high staff turnover in its senior management ranks as it moves to a third-party administration provider for superannuation funds.

The company earlier this week announced it had appointed Hayden King as operations general manager. King joined the firm from Onevue, where he was chief executive of registry services.

But the new appointment comes after FuturePlus has experienced a series of redundancies and resignations of senior staff, after Local Government Super (LGS) sold its share in the firm to Energy Industries Superannuation Scheme (EISS) in November last year.

In addition to the 37 client services, financial planning and marketing staff who transferred to LGS in December last year, a number of Futureplus senior staff have left the firm, resulting in the departure of virtually all of FuturePlus's executive team as it existed before the LGS exit.

The latest departure at the firm is FuturePlus chief financial officer Tony Griffin.
 
"Yes, unfortunately Tony has decided to leave FuturePlus to pursue other opportunities. He will leave at the end of November. We are currently looking for a replacement for Tony," FuturePlus managing director Madeline Dermatossion told Investor Weekly.

At the end of last year, FuturePlus head of IT Ivan Jones had already left, and he joined Telstra Super in August 2011 as general manager of financial planning, while FuturePlus head of client services Jim Thomas also left the firm at that time.

"As part of the restructure some of the staff of FuturePlus transferred to Local Government Super and there were a number of voluntary redundancies that were offered. That is the reason for the reduction in staff numbers," Dermatossian, who was appointed as managing director of FuturePlus in May this year, said.

"The head of IT role was changed as part of the overall restructuring of FuturePlus, and the restructure of FuturePlus reduced the costs by 25 per cent overall."

FuturePlus changed the head of IT role to an IT manager role and promoted Lew Usher, who has been with the firm for nine years, to the position.

Thomas's role also was no longer required as a result of the restructure, Dermatossian said.

"The majority of the functions that reported into Jim Thomas were the ones that transferred to LGS," she said.

FuturePlus general manager Greg Walsh resigned in July and has since taken up the position of special counsel with Mercer.

"Greg decided to leave the organisation, unfortunately after a short period of time. However, he has been replaced by Leah Fricke," Dermatossian said.

Fricke joined from Advent Lawyers and had been working on assignment at PricewaterhouseCoopers as a senior legal counsel.

In June, FuturePlus also terminated investments general manager Michael Block.

"Our core business offering is super administration and consulting services. Within the consulting services we offer a range of support services and that includes legal, compliance, financial planning, fund accounting and IT," Dermatossian said.

"You will notice that I didn't mention in that group investment services, because we did previously provide them, but we provided those services only to one client, which was the Energy Industry Super Scheme.

"However, EISS decided earlier this year that they wanted to in-source that function and as a result we did no longer have the requirement of a CIO within FuturePlus."

Investor Weekly understands the main investment role at EISS has been filled by former QBE fixed income portfolio manager Mary Jane Fallon, who started in the role on 10 October. 

FuturePlus's main clients are still LGS and EISS, to which it provides administration services.

But with the restructuring to a third-party administration model following the exit of LGS, Dermatossion sais she was keen to expand FuturePlus's services, including its legal and compliance services.

At the end of last year, the firm established the legal entity FuturePlus Legal Services.

"We are able to offer legal services to clients outside our current client base. That is a fee-for-service," she said.

However, FuturePlus has been unable to secure any external clients yet and also has not found anyone to lead this business.

"We are still working to filling the main position before we go out and attract external [clients]," Dermatossian said.

FuturePlus provides administration services to 230,000 members with funds under management of $9 billion.