Accounting and financial advisory firm CountPlus has entered into an agreement to acquire actuarial certificate and SMSF education provider Accurium from current owner Challenger.
The purchase price successfully negotiated for the acquisition is $9 million, with CountPlus recognising the transaction as providing it with the opportunity to expand its core service delivery to the SMSF sector and more accounting firms across the country.
The new ownership structure will see CountPlus hold an 85 per cent share in Accurium, with the other 15 per cent being allocated to key management personnel in alignment with the CountPlus owner driver-partner strategy.
From a personnel perspective, all current Accurium staff members will be retained and current general manager Doug McBirnie will take on the new role of managing director.
CountPlus chief executive Matthew Rowe noted his organisation has the ability to integrate and grow the Accurium business and take advantage of its own competitive advantage in the accounting and SMSF administration areas.
“Accurium sits naturally within our network and has a subscriber base of some 3000 accounting firms and 11,000 SMSF professionals who require the efficiencies of online, automated actuarial certification and supplementary education and technical services,” Rowe said.
“The Accurium business is an online service provider, is highly automated, using proprietary actuarial calculators. It is technology-enabled with an ability to scale up as an ageing population transition their SMSFs to retirement phase. Accurium estimates the current addressable market for SMSF actuarial certificates is circa 140,000 funds.
“Like CountPlus, Accurium is a reputable business with a values-led team seeking to make a difference to clients. We look forward to welcoming the team to CountPlus and to realising the growth and earnings potential of the core-related Accurium business.”
The Accurium acquisition follows CountPlus’s 51 per cent purchase of paraplanning, technology and administration services firm Wealth Axis in May as part of its “core-related” strategy.
