To increase the size of its financial advice network (FAN), Axa is actively recruiting planners from South Africa and the UK.
"It is an innovative initiative to help grow the pool of quality advisers in Australia... adviser numbers in this country have been flat for quite some time," Axa and Charter Financial Planning national director Paul Williams said.
"We are doing a number of things with universities to attract graduates... but we thought we would go that extra step and leverage some of Axa's international capability, so we sent some people over to the UK and South Africa and we have got stunning results," he said.
Launched internally 12 months ago, the scheme has resulted in 13 appointments to the Axa FAN so far.
The new recruits have helped in providing an additional level of expertise to services, according to Williams.
"Some of our businesses actually specialise in expats, so a lot of the new people are able to bring some good senses of influence and good contacts to Australia," he said.
The recruits are generally offered several options in order to get established in the domestic market, usually encompassing rural and urban.
"A couple of them have gone into their own business but we generally encourage them to team up with an existing practitioner to help them with technical issues, mainly around tax," Williams said.
The relocation to Australia is funded by the planner, with business support provided by Axa once they arrive.
