My Adviser has added seven financial advisers to its network with another eight additions imminent, the company's managing director has said.
"We're well ahead of our projected growth plans for this year - we've got seven new planners that we have just [added to] My Adviser, which are part of four businesses, and we have another eight financial planners who completed applications to join and we've submitted them for approval," My Adviser managing director Philippa Sheehan told InvestorDaily.
The dealer group is almost 100 per cent owned by listed dealer group Plan B, and looks set to be taken over by IOOF. However, despite the looming buyout, My Adviser remains firm in its plans to recruit advisers and operate with objectivity.
The licensee's growth strategy would continue throughout next year as it did not want to add too many advisers all at once, Sheehan said.
"My Adviser is very clear about how many practices we want to grow to and with that we're very particular about making sure we don't lose that culture of collaborating with our advisers," she said.
In light of the announcement, she said it was vital that licensees provided comprehensive adviser support services because advisers did not feel that support was available and they continued to face challenging conditions following the global financial crisis, forcing their businesses to operate much differently.
"In the past, licensees have always been about dictating to their advisers what they must do, what they must look like and what they must offer to their client, but what we've done is really focused on collaborating with the individual businesses as they are," she said.
"A lot of advisers perhaps doubt that this type of support is out there; this collaborative approach."
In addition, licensees providing strategies for advisers to recommend, which met their client objectives, were better positioned to attract advisers, she said.
"We're seeing a trend within our group where advisers are seeing clients that don't even get recommended any product at the end of the day; it is purely a strategy," she said.
"We, as a licensee, have really had to adapt the support services we provide accordingly and therefore have upped the focus in relation to strategies for advisers to help clients."
She said licensees must go beyond compliance, training and revenue processing for advisers as they were now looking for strategies distinctly separate from products.
