Barry Lambert

In honour of founder, Barry Lambert, Countplus has announced the creation of the Barry Lambert Harvard Business School Scholarship.

The scholarship acknowledges Mr Lambert’s significant contribution over the last 50 years, to the company and the broader financial services sector.

Countplus CEO, Matthew Rowe, said “With Barry’s impending retirement, we could think of no better way to honour his legacy than through this scholarship”.

Each year, the Board will choose one recipient from within the Countplus senior network to undertake the “Leading Professional Services Firms” Executive Education program at Harvard Business School in Boston, USA.

David Reeves, Principal at Cooper Reeves, was recently announced as the inaugural recipient of the scholarship.

Mr Rowe congratulated Mr Reeves on being the first recipient of the new scholarship for his leadership and business acumen.

“David has been a consistent high performer and has built a wonderful culture at Cooper Reeves that is widely admired within Countplus and the broader community,” Mr Rowe said.

The scholarship seeks to reward the highest level of business achievement within the Countplus network and includes the costs of tuition, accommodation and travel to the US.

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“We see a near-term supply and demand bottleneck. Demand from ageing consumers reaching retirement age, the need for sound wealth counsel is rising in Australia, yet the supply of non-conflicted, high-quality financial advice and accounting services is lagging,” Mr Kellerman said.

“Add to this the ongoing convergence of professional financial advice with traditional accounting and taxation services, and the pre-requisites for growth of the Countplus collaborative partnership model are clear.”

Mr Kellerman succeeds industry pioneer and CUP founding chairman Barry Lambert. His non-executive chairmanship follows the recent appointment of Matthew Rowe to the Countplus CEO and Managing Director role. Mr Rowe is a former Financial Planning Association Chairman and a recent appointee to the Federal Government’s Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority.

“Matthew’s appointment signals a dynamic and able leadership team is in place that will build upon the foundations put in place by Barry Lambert and the national member firms that comprise Countplus.

“Our recent conversations with member firms have been highly productive and show a keen willingness to embrace new thinking about the important role each plays in their communities, with clients and in the future success of Countplus and its shareholders,” Mr Kellerman said.

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Barry Lambert

The Countplus Limited Board, led by Chairman Barry Lambert since 2006, yesterday announced the retirement of Barry Lambert as Chairman, effective immediately.

In announcing his retirement as Chairman, Barry Lambert advised the Board he would be available to continue to serve as a Director of the company in the short term.

Barry Lambert retires as Chairman with the best wishes and thanks of the entire Board of Directors.

Yesterday’s announcement is consistent with Barry Lambert’s stated intention to retire within a year of the 2016 company Annual General Meeting (AGM). He is succeeded by highly-credentialed financial services industry leader, Ray Kellerman, as Non-Executive Chairman of Countplus (ASX: CUP).

Late last year the Lambert’s sponsored the Lambert Centre for the study of Medicinal Cannabis and Hemp at Thomas Jefferson University – Philadelphia USA. Before leaving to attend a meeting with Senior American Doctors and Scientists, Barry Lambert said

“Many Australians have seen our campaign to have our grand-daughter Katelyn Lambert’s “life-saving” medicinal cannabis legalised not only for Katelyn but an estimated 200,000 Australians who are acting illegally by accessing full spectrum Hemp/Cannabis extract for a range of conditions where traditional Pharmaceutical drugs don’t work well enough or have harmful side effects. This will remain a high priority.

“Secondly, I have been invited to become the Chairman of Ecofibre, an 18-year old Australian company, considered a global leader in all aspects of industrial hemp. The company, has largely moved its operations offshore, where it produces and sells a very competitively priced Nutraceutical – Ananda Hemp. Ecofibre is planning a 2018 Australian sharemarket listing,”

“Most importantly, I thank the Countplus Board, the company’s new CEO Matthew Rowe and incoming Chairman Ray Kellerman for their support of my decision to retire as Chairman from Countplus.”

Barry Lambert went on to say “I understand and am disappointed by the factors that have worked against the overall performance of Countplus in recent times. I also appreciate the opportunity with a new leadership team to unlock the full potential of the Countplus business and model moving forward.”

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Matthew Rowe

Countplus has announces the appointment of Mr Matthew Rowe as its Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, effective immediately.

Mr Rowe brings a track record of leading high-performing professional services firms, including as the former long-serving managing director of Adelaide-based Hood Sweeney, a Countplus member firm, Australia’s 30th largest accounting firm and a twice-listed BRW fast growth business.

Mr Rowe is the former Chairman of the Financial Planning Association of Australia, its longest serving chairman. He was appointed a Director of Countplus in October, 2016.

“Countplus welcomes the known and capable skills of Matthew Rowe in taking on this leadership role for Countplus,” said Chairman Barry Lambert.

“The Board endorses Matthew’s appointment as part of a revitalised approach to capturing greater growth upside on behalf of Countplus member firms, their clients and company shareholders.

“We expect Matthew to hit the ground running given his strong familiarity with the professional services sector, the Countplus business and its member firms. We look forward to Matthew applying the same leadership attributes he displayed in lifting the standards of all financial planners on behalf of Australian consumers as Chairman of the Financial Planning Association,” Mr Lambert said.

Mr Rowe said his first priority as incoming chief executive is to speak with each principal of the Countplus member network.

“Many of those people are known personally to me. They are dedicated professionals, and I look forward to supporting each practice to exploit the latent opportunities of scale amid the ongoing convergence and partnerships between accounting and financial planning in Australia,” he said.

Mr Rowe holds a Bachelor of Economics, is a Fellow of CPA Australia, a Certified Financial Planner (Life) and completed the Harvard Business School General Management Program.

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Barry Lambert

Digital financial advice is poised for rapid uptake in Australia, with 2017 set to be the year when professional financial businesses adopt ‘robo-advice’ as an essential element of their client offering. Ignition Wealth is at the forefront of the pack of Australian digital financial advice technology providers.

“Everyone is talking about the cloud revolution and many are looking to change their technology because they want to look smarter. Changing technology is very expensive if it does not revolutionise your business. Financial planning, a labour intensive business is ripe for a business makeover, incorporating digital financial advice (or ‘robo-advice’).

“Digitalised servicing of the 80 percent of clients that represent only 20 percent of profits is the obvious first step. The percentage of clients serviced by digital financial advice will soon become the industry benchmark AND you will never have to refund fees due to non service!”said Barry Lambert, Investor and Mentor, Ignition Wealth.

Overwhelmingly, businesses across the financial spectrum are selecting Ignition Wealth as their digital financial advice provider for the same three key reasons: speed and ease of integration, robust compliance and a solid, experienced team.

“Integration with the Ignition Wealth technology is fast, easy and inexpensive. The most simple ‘out of the box’ solution can be fully integrated and operational within three days and for a cost of just $1,200.” said Richard Liverpool, Head of Sales and Marketing at Ignition Wealth.

Ignition Wealth has been taking meetings from interested parties and heads of major financial institutions since late 2014; today interest has turned into requests for immediate action as businesses urgently seek to provide their clients and members with a proven digital financial advice solution.

“While there have been challenges guiding Ignition Wealth through the early stages of extremely rapid innovation and development, the rewards have been high as the company has attracted both a strong investor and client base. Digital financial advice powered by Ignition Wealth is a unique offering, combining futuristic innovation with the age old banking principles of excellent customer service and maximum return for our clients.” said Peter Meurer, Chairman Board of Directors, Founding Investor at Ignition Wealth and Chairman of Nomura Australia.

Ignition Wealth technology solutions have powered more than 800,000 advice journeys through tools and calculators since 2010. The highly advanced technology stack has been built to enable bespoke configuration to custom portfolios, currencies, regulatory requirements, taxation, superannuation and unique business needs.

“Across all technology and disruption products and services, adoption curves are becoming steeper. In Australia, throughout 2016 we have seen an increasingly rapid uptake of digital financial advice by early adopters and evangelists. In 2017 digital financial advice will become a mainstream solution, provided as a core offering by professional financial businesses.” said Mark Fordree, CEO at Ignition Wealth.

In 2016 Ignition Wealth experienced rapid growth, attracting several million dollar investment funding rounds from investors including Australian rich-lister Barry Lambert and Millinium Capital Funds and announcing multiple high profile business partnerships including Link Digital Solutions.

“Much as the ATM went from being a novelty service to an essential part of daily life, digital financial advice will become an assumed offering for all good operators. By the close of 2017 good financial businesses which do not have a digital advice component will be the exception rather than the rule.” said Mark Fordree.

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Barry Lambert

LoanDolphin, Australia’s leading loan bidding platform, has successfully raised a total of $1.1 million from key investors to expand its presence in major capital cities in a bid to claim a stake in Australia’s $1.5 trillion home loan market.

Strategic investor Barry Lambert provided $1 million, with the remainder from fintech investment firm H2 Ventures.

Mr Lambert founded Count Financial in 1980 and sold the company to Commonwealth Bank in 2011 for $373 million.

The seed funding values the Sydney-based fintech startup at $5 million post capital raising rounds.

LoanDolphin is a free online platform for people to refinance or obtain new home loans at rates not advertised by banks or lenders. Customers using LoanDolphin have already begun saving tens of thousands of dollars on their mortgage.

Mortgage brokers, lenders and banks bid to win customers’ business on LoanDolphin, which has delivered an average savings of $5254 per year to home owners. The platform was launched in February 2016.

“We are extremely excited by the capital boost which will help us accelerate our growth plans,” LoanDolphin CEO Ranin Mendis said.

“Barry’s involvement is extremely valuable to LoanDolphin and strong validation of our model and market opportunity,” Mr Mendis said.

LoanDolphin will use the funding to reach more customers, develop the team and to introduce new features to the platform.

“LoanDolphin’s bidding platform is the next generation in mortgage broking efficiency and borrower savings,” Mr Lambert said.

“It is a much more efficient prospecting tool for mortgage brokers and therefore enables them to pass on those savings to borrowers.

“The system has been written by bankers who understand the mortgage broking industry and therefore understand the real issues for borrowers, brokers and banks,” Mr Lambert said.

He added that LoanDolphin understands exactly where substantial financial and time efficiencies could be achieved while dramatically increasing a borrower’s user satisfaction.

H2 Ventures co-founder, Toby Heap, said: “we are thrilled with the progress that Ranin and Rod (Dutra) have made during their time in the H2 Accelerator and in the short time since graduating from the program.”

“LoanDolphin has all the attributes required to make a really meaningful fintech startup, a great team, a great customer experience and now funding from a high-quality investor which will allow it to aggressively grow its market share over the coming months.

“LoanDolphin is a great example of what fintech startups are doing to give consumers more power in the management of their financial affairs. We are excited to be supporting fintech startups like LoanDolphin,” Mr Heap said.

In August, LoanDolphin reached a significant milestone with more than $100 million worth of home loans auctioned on its platform.

LoanDolphin offers customers a simple and efficient way to get the lowest interest home loan rates for free.

It takes around three minutes for customers to (anonymously) upload their home loan requirements before mortgage brokers, lenders and banks start bidding to offer them the best home loan rates which are never advertised.

LoanDolphin customers have saved around 87 basis points or 0.87% percentage points, which translates to more than $130,000 on a $500,000, 30-year loan.

The platform is crucial to helping those in the dark – a recent survey conducted by LoanDolphin revealed that 65 per cent of borrowers didn’t know what their mortgage interest rates were.

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Barry Lambert

Financial services veteran Barry Lambert continues to drive for an increase in the efficiency of the financial advice industry. Following on from the success of his cloud based SMSF software company Class Limited, Lambert has recently invested in digital financial advice leader Ignition Wealth.

“I have long believed that the only thing guaranteed in financial advice is the cost. With the ever increasing burden of compliance it is essential that the industry reduces the cost of advice so that it can be made available to the majority rather than the few.”

Barry Lambert, Investor, Ignition Wealth. Lambert’s support of the rising ‘robo­advice’ industry stems from the need for a low cost, high efficiency solution. “Investors are in desperate need of a low cost accumulation and advice vehicle for SMSF and non super advice. Ignition Wealth is such a vehicle. Substantially improved efficiency, along with more direct and low cost ETF investments are the only way to meaningfully reduce the cost to investors of advice.”

Barry Lambert, Investor, Ignition Wealth. Lambert advocates that advisers use Ignition Wealth to house and grow C and D financial advice clients and transaction-­only clients, until such time as it becomes worthwhile to onboard them as full service clients. Lambert speaks from his own experience and sees himself as a textbook example of the benefits of establishing an early relationship with prospective clients. He started as a school banking client of the CBA and more than 60 years later is still banking with CBA today.

“Ignition Wealth is the financial adviser’s equivalent of the school banking model with the added advantage that it costs the financial adviser, the beneficiary of Ignition Wealth, nothing and the client very little as the technology automates advice and compliance.”

Barry Lambert, Investor, Ignition Wealth. Lambert’s only regret is that cloud-­based Ignition Wealth was not available 35 years ago when he began his career as a financial adviser. Lambert makes a welcome addition to the Ignition Wealth fold. “We are delighted to add Barry Lambert’s extensive experience and financial services industry wisdom to Ignition Wealth. His contribution as an investor and mentor is invaluable.” Mark Fordree, CEO, Ignition Wealth.

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The Directors declared a third quarterly dividend for 2014/15 of 2 cents per share fully franked, payable on 15 May 2015.

Key drivers of the result

“These half-year results, a significant increase on last year’s, reflect both strong performance from non-accounting businesses and continued challenging conditions in accounting and business services,” said Mr. Barry Lambert, Chairman.

“Our diversified portfolio of businesses contributed strongly to the group result, while accounting business revenue was flat for the period,” said Mr. Lambert.

Phil Aris, Chief Executive Officer, said “Financial planning and property broking businesses have grown both organically and by acquisition. In financial planning we continue to see improvement across the Member Firms with increased confidence amongst retail investors. The group’s largest firm, Total Financial Solutions, also benefitted from new firms joining their network over the last year.

“Independent property broking group, Pacific East Coast, was one of the group’s strongest performers assisted by continued strength in the residential property market along the eastern seaboard.”

Strategy

Experience to date with member firms, and market conditions for accounting businesses have led the Board and management to undertake a major new initiative in accounting.

“Market conditions demand that accounting practice principals have access to succession solutions, and effective responses to industry changes and trends such as regulation, offshoring & technology disruption – both to stay competitive and to grow. While corporatised accounting firms can provide these benefits, we’ve also observed a common barrier to growth. When owner-operators sell 100% equity, revenue and earnings can remain flat as principals are disincentivised to drive growth,” said Mr. Aris.

“Today Countplus is launching a new business, Blue789.

“We are meeting the prevailing market with an innovative, and well-considered, shared equity business model. We will become a “growth facilitator”, partnering with businesses that are already successful, whose principals want to retain their branding and entrepreneurial control, and that have the opportunity to grow in their market.

“Practice principals will benefit from access to specialist and proven corporate expertise, funding and growth resources. Our hybrid corporate / owner operator model has received exceedingly positive responses from target businesses whose principals want both shared equity and corporate support to facilitate growth, particularly at key hurdles,” said Mr. Aris.

This is consistent with the previously announced direct equity plan for existing Countplus subsidiaries where principals and senior employees are able to acquire direct equity in their businesses.

“To deliver on this strategy we have strengthened our executive team, with the promotion of Phil Aris from highly successful Countplus business Total Financial Services to Countplus CEO, and the appointment of Barry McGee to lead Blue789,” said Mr. Lambert.

Full year

While strong first half performance is expected to continue into the second half, historically revenues from CUP accounting business have been inconsistent in the second half. The performance of equity accounted associates is expected to remain strong over the 12 months. The quarterly dividend of two cents (fully franked) is expected to be maintained.

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