The company is looking for boutique fund managers, structured finance businesses and companies with investment banking expertise.MFS chief executive Jason Maywald says MFS has some “reasonably advanced” discussions going on in some of these areas, however he wouldn’t elaborate on which ones.
He says the key benefit of the Northplan deal is that it provides distribution for other products.
“We have secured distribution for a range of other products we are going to release.”
Besides Northplan’s nine offices, the company has just acquired Peter Jones Financial Planning in Rotorua, it fully owns Investor Centre in Whangarei, has a 50% stake in Colin Strang’s business in Dunedin, 25% of Swain Financial Services in Invercargill and a 40% stake in New Plymouth-based Westplan.
MFS, as reported previously by Good Returns, is keen to expand its product range to include managed funds as well as the existing finance company investments.
He says there will be little change in the current products used by Northplan. The company mainly focuses on income and property related assets and uses a wide range of finance company debentures.
“I don’t see us moving to a position where Northplan will only sell MFS product,” Maywald says. “That would destroy a lot of the value in Northplan.”
MFS New Zealand national sales manager Julian Travaglia has told advisers who support its finance company business, MFS Pacific, that they shouldn’t fear the deal.
He says Northplan and MFS Pacific will be run separately, but side-by-side.
“We don’t anticipate any conflict, cross over or information sharing because of the way in which the business operations of MFS’ existing business and Northplan will be structured.
MFS will continue to maintain all of its relationships and dealings with its wider intermediary network entirely separate to Northplan. There will not be any sharing of client information between MFS and Northplan.”
Another benefit of the deal for MFS is that operational systems and support, as well as a platform to run its business in New Zealand. This means that it doesn’t have to rely on its parent company in Australia for these services.
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