Heffron SMSF Solutions has successfully completed the acquisition of 1400 SMSFs and would continue to focus on building further scalability through more large purchases.
“Our purchase of MLC’s SMSF admin book, roughly 1400 funds, was major in terms of growth as it [more than] doubled the size of our business,” Heffron managing director Martin Heffron told selfmanagedsuper.
“We’ve taken on such a large acquisition relative to our size and purchasing from a large institution like MLC, there are a fair few governance hoops that you need to negotiate, but it’s been very successful and the funds have been bedded down now so we’re doing the work.”
Total SMSFs Heffron administered now stood at about 3500, making it one of the largest independent administration service providers in the country.
“Mergers and acquisitions have to be part of the story now if we’re to exploit the scalability that we’ve built and MLC has been the first big transaction in [our business] trying to do that,” Heffron said.
“We’re actively pursuing it, but given the industry, there are not a lot of huge books with a thousand funds-plus around so there aren’t that many opportunities of that size.”
He said prior to the acquisition, it was difficult for the business to achieve scalability.
“In order to scale up, we needed the skill sets and capability that we didn’t have,” he said.
“So we went through a fair bit of change about two years ago and recruited a lot of people with those different skill sets.”
