Spring FG believes it will emerge as a leading competitor in the SMSF space as there is strong client demand for full financial services.
Spring FG managing director Keith Cullen said SMSFs were a key pillar of the business.
“According to the latest ATO data, about 10 per cent of all super members are SMSFs, but they’re controlling nearly 35 per cent of the assets in super, so it’s an incredible market and it’s growing very strongly,” Cullen told selfmanagedsuper.
“The nexus in it is that most advisers are not interested in advising people on SMSFs because they’ve got a vested interest in seeing people in the products that their corporate masters are producing, so where do those people go?
“We think there’s a massive opportunity for a company like ours to emerge as the lead player in that space. That’s where a lot of our focus is.”
In addition, he said there was not a need to generate demand in the SMSF space.
“There’s an exodus from retail and industry funds of all their best members, who seek and need advice,” he said.
“But we spend more time talking people out of SMSFs than we spend talking them into it because a lot of people come to us wanting to do it, but it doesn’t make sense for them – they don’t have a big enough balance, it’s the wrong stage in their lifecycle, et cetera, so there’s such a natural demand in the market that there’s no need to sell people on the idea of it.
“Our core SMSF services are accounting and tax, mortgage brokerage, finance brokerage, direct equities investing and trading, managed funds, insurance, estate planning and investment property, however, we don’t have people just coming to us for tax or just investments; all of our clients come to us for full-service financial planning.”
The firm currently referred out estate planning, but had plans to expand in the area and bring the function in-house, he said.
“Frankly, it’s not what I’d call a high-margin/high-profit area that investors get excited about, but it’s a very important component of someone’s financial life that is way too often overlooked,” he said.
“But we definitely see it as an opportunity from a service perspective because we want to ensure that people have got their estate planning in order and the ultimate way to do that is to bring that in-house, as it is a very specialist area.”
Spring FG expected to list on the Australian Securities Exchange in March after it experienced an oversubscription for its $4 million capital raising, which had strong backing, particularly from retail investors.
