Marshall and I are here today to give you a bit of an update on what’s been happening in the business and a few things that we’re looking forward to over the next month or so.
As you would know in November last year we announced the acquisition of the Principal Edge business, their office is down in Double Bay and a very successful business that we’re now bringing into the overall Evalesco family and it’s been going fantastically well.
You probably haven’t noticed any change at all since we made that announcement, however there will be a couple of things coming up over the next little while that you will see.
One of the key things is we will be moving our license from the current AAN license to the Principal Edge license. So Principal Edge have had their own license for over 30 years and we’ve been with the AAN license for about eight years.
We’ve made some really careful consideration as to the best setup for our business going forward. We’re really clear we didn’t want to have two licenses, so we’ve looked at how we can maximise the opportunities to provide more efficient, still highly compliant and effective advice for our clients and we believe moving into the Principal Edge license bringing the two businesses together under that license will be the right way to go.
End of March beginning of April you may see some correspondence from us about that. Day to day nothing will change, your adviser still remains your adviser, the team is still in place to help you with your advice but there’ll be a little bit of paperwork and you’ll see some different names on some of those forms that normally come out to you.
There’s also been a couple of slight changes to our roles and maybe you can sort of talk about that a little bit Marshall.
Its a pleasure to be here as always, I guess the biggest change for Jeff and I whilst we continue our role as financial advisers working with a select group of clients is that you know there’s a little bit more scar, a little bit more complexity in terms of what we’re both managing now it’s a larger business with more moving pieces, more clients and certainly more team members to manage as well.
Jeff’s role of CEO is expanded so you know, going beyond the viewpoint of managing the Evalesco family but now taking on board Principal Edge as well and my role of COO effectively of Evalesco and the representative on the investment committee there as many of you would have seen the videos and podcasts over the years, I guess that’s been elevated to that hold the new license as well.
You know at the moment I’m effectively responsible for managing about $600 million within the Evalesco group, that’s been expanded with the acquisition of Principal Edge that’s it at about $800 million, so there’s a little bit more involved there but importantly it’s I guess one takeaway that I’d like you to walk away with or think about is that it’s given some of our team members the opportunity to take on a little bit more responsibility as well.
Whilst Jeff and I are taking on those roles we’re still financial advisers but over time we’ll introduce other team members that have got specialist skill sets to be able to support you.
The key there is to make sure that you’re continuing to get the support and value advice and service that you should get. We think by bringing the two businesses together having a clear focus around that, there’s going to be a lot of benefits that flow through to you as our value clients over a little while, some of those will take a while to sort of come through but we’re starting that journey now with some of the behind the scenes things working with the license, no changes in the short term to the investment side of things, but you know we will have a broader suite of products and services that we can provide as a result of the integration of the two businesses coming together.
I mean picking up on that Jeff if you think about the existing relationships that we have and the way the manner in which we manage money at the moment I’m not envisaging large levels of changes in that space, what I do expect though is a greater depth of suppliers that we’ll commence working relationships with.
At the moment a number of our clients would be familiar with Praemium as a platform and as of late last year we undertook some fairly rigorous due diligence to select an alternate provider which is Netwealth and as a result of the relationship that we now have with Principal Edge they’ve got a really deep and considered relationship with Macquarie. Effectively we’ve got three platforms that we work really closely which allows us to manage money relatively seamlessly across the business to ensure that clients get great outcomes where possible with the least level of friction.
I guess the key takeout short term is that there is no major change other than a different name, Principal Edge will be the new license from around about the beginning of April, we’ll be corresponding with you, talk to your adviser if you have any questions.
Marsh and I are always available to have a chat if you have any questions of us as well, so thanks for listening to us today and have a great day.
