Bendigo and Adelaide Bank's decision to form a wealth management arm was not part of a strategy to distance the brand from Great Southern legal concerns, a company executive has said.
"I'm not qualified to talk about Great Southern. It's something that's not in my area so that would indicate to you that my motivation certainly didn't have anything to do with Great Southern," Bendigo Wealth executive John Billington said.
"It's more around bringing all the wealth together under a coherent brand."
Earlier this month, lawyers acting on behalf of more than 2000 Great Southern investors called on ASIC to investigate Bendigo and Adelaide Bank over claims it breached its obligations on market disclosure.
Macpherson + Kelley Lawyers called for investigations into the activities of the listed banking group after it allegedly failed to inform the market about a recent court decision involving a class action against Bendigo.
The bank has an exposure of about $550 million to borrowers in Great Southern managed investment schemes (MIS).
However, Billington said there were two key reasons for establishing a wealth division. The first being that while the retail bank has very strong customer satisfaction both from the community and from the retail bank standpoint, it did not have a strong enough presence around wealth products.
"I don't think that we've actively enabled our retail banking, financial planners and business bank to have the sorts of value based conversations that we do pride ourselves on," he said.
Billington said the second motivating factor for the wealth division was from an independent financial adviser (IFA) standpoint.
"I think we're good at [our services] but by bringing it together it meant that IFAs dealing with Bendigo would be able to recommend a full suite of our wealth creation and protection products under the same brand," he said.
