Jacobsen’s appointment follows the recent decision by David Carney, VBP Co-founder and longstanding CEO, to step back from day-to-day management to focus on business development, marketing and innovation.

Paul Barrett, Chairman of VBP and CEO of AZ NGA, said Jacobsen’s track record of successfully transforming wealth management businesses and his experience in strategy, technology and M&A strongly positioned him to lead VBP into its next phase of growth.

“Nathan is a highly respected financial services executive and we are extremely fortunate to have him on board to lead this dynamic business. VBP’s vision and purpose is to support professional advisory firms to grow and deliver generational change for their clients and, over the last decade, it has become an invaluable business partner to some of Australia’s best advice businesses,” Barrett said.

“David Carney has done an incredible job of turning VBP into Australia’s leading adviser services utility and we are pleased that he will remain with the business to facilitate a smooth leadership transition and play a key role in the group’s ongoing success.”

In his new role as Head of Growth, Carney will report to Jacobsen.

VBP was established in 2013 by David Carney and David Deegan to deliver a range of outsourced business solutions including financial planning administration, accounting and bookkeeping, paraplanning and mortgage broking support.

In 2023, the group acquired Elixir Consulting, significantly expanding its capability and capacity to provide business coaching, strategy and consulting.

The Australian-owned, Sydney and Philippines-based group, which has over 1250 team members and 260 clients, is a Certified B Corporation (B Corp) and has consistently been recognised by Great Place to Work.

According to Jacobsen, the skills shortage in Australia was holding businesses back from helping more people, which increased the need and relevance of VBP’s proposition.

“One of the biggest challenges facing businesses is finding and maintaining talent, and VBP is ideally positioned to help advisers solve that problem. There is also an exciting opportunity to help advisers achieve scale and efficiency benefits through process optimization and the effective use of technology,” he said.

“I am excited to lead this fantastic business, as we continue investing in people, products and solutions.”

Jacobsen departed Diverger in March, following the group’s merger with Count. Prior to his role at Diverger, he held a number of senior positions including Managing Director of Paragem and General Manager of Perpetual Private.

He was also formerly an officer in the Australian Navy.

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Chris Miller has joined VBP as paraplanning technical lead. He is tasked with developing and broadening VBP’s capabilities by providing technical support, learning, development and mentoring to a team of paraplanners, quality assurance analysts and managers.

Mr Miller joins from Focus Partners Financial Services, where he was a paraplanner since January 2020. Before that, he spent four years as both a paraplanner and a financial planner at Generations Personal & Professional Advice in Wodonga, Victoria.

Mr Miller reports to the head of client experience, Sarah Matthews, who was promoted to the newly-created role in January this year. Mrs Matthews was previously VBP’s head of advice delivery, and has been at the firm since December 2019.

VBP provides off-shore specialist assistance and support to Australian-based financial planning firms and was founded in 2013 by financial advice industry veterans David Carney and David Deegan.

Mr Carney said Mr Miller’s skill in working under pressure and adapting to new situations and challenges makes him a perfect paraplanning technical lead.

“Chris is a dedicated financial planning professional with a history of maintaining high levels of technical and compliance support to financial planners and their businesses,” Mr Carney said.

“With a proven history of managing teams of support staff, we believe Chris has what it takes to make a significant impact and effectively meet client expectations and company goals within an expanding VBP team.”

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Paul Barrett

Professional services utility, AZ Next Generation Advisory (AZ NGA), and national financial advisory business, Invest Blue, have joined forces to co-invest in Australian-owned, Philippines-based paraplanning and back-office solutions provider, Virtual Business Partners (VBP).

Under the deal, AZ NGA and Invest Blue will acquire a 40% interest in VBP with the group’s management team increasing their holding to 20%, and VBP’s founding shareholders, David Carney and David Deegan, retaining a 40% stake.

The transaction enables all parties to fulfil key strategic priorities. It represents AZ NGA’s foray into the advice supply chain, giving the group exposure to a high-quality standalone investment, and securing capability and capacity in the midst of a skills and talent shortage.

Similarly, it reinforces Invest Blue’s strategy to acquire capability and empower people on its mission to become Australia’s largest integrated financial advice brand.

The deal also concludes VBP’s extensive search for an experienced long-term capital partner to help manage key-person risk and succession, and fuel the group’s growth and expansion plans.

According to David Carney, VBP Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, the transaction will ensure VBP retains its convincing lead as Australia’s number one outsourcing partner for financial planning businesses.

“This is an exciting partnership that means we can continue growing, innovating and adding value for our clients,” he said.

“It has allowed David Deegan and myself to realise some capital value, created a pathway for key staff to buy into the business and, in doing so, strengthened our employee value proposition, which will help us attract and retain the best talent.”

Paul Barrett, AZ NGA Chief Executive Officer, said the group was attracted to VBP’s clear purpose, differentiated proposition and vision for the future.

“VBP is not an outsourcing company but a human resources partner for advisory businesses looking to increase efficiencies, reduce their cost to serve and improve their net profit margin,” Mr Barrett said.

“Culturally, there is a lot of alignment between VBP, AZ NGA and Invest Blue, and together our focus is on helping more advisory businesses and extending VBP’s market position.”

David Stephen, Invest Blue Chief Executive Officer said the group was continuously on the lookout for profitable, growing businesses.

“As one of VBP’s largest, longest-standing clients, we know the people who lead this organisation and the talented people they attract. We have every confidence in their ability to grow and continue providing excellent service,” he said.

“We’re also keen to attract and acquire other like-minded advice businesses, and we have the right structures and processes in place to enable advisers to deliver their client service proposition. VBP is a key part of that framework.”

Mr Barrett added: “AZ NGA is not only interested in high quality accounting and advisory SMEs but we see opportunities to invest in key parts of the supply line.”

“A horizontally integrated strategy makes sense because there are clear bottlenecks in the advice process, such as the production of advice documents, and there’s also a huge war for talent. These trends support our strategy and underpinned our interest in VBP,” he said.

“VBP is effectively a human resources solution. It is partnering with advice businesses to solve resourcing problems and build a strong people strategy.”

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Cassandra Thong has been appointed to the newly created role. She will work closely with Andrew Rocks, who has been the Head of Partnership and Business Development since January 2020.

Based in Sydney, Ms Thong has more than 25 years of experience in the financial planning industry, with her first 12 years spent running her own financial planning and mortgage broking business. Ms Thong joins VBP from Capify Australia where she was a Senior BDM. Prior to that, she was the National Partnership Manager for Sydney-based advice firm Milyar.

Ms Thong will work with new and existing clients to assist with building out each financial services practice’s capacity and capability and assist them with achieving their strategic goals.

David Carney, chief executive officer of VBP, said Ms Thong’s extensive knowledge of financial planning and mortgage broking will be a useful asset to the business as it expands its strategic capabilities.

“Cassandra has established strong relationships and networks within the industry. She comes from a strong business development and relationship management background and has a solid understanding of Australian clients and business,” Mr Carney said.

“Cassandra’s knowledge and experience will be invaluable to VBP as we integrate the financial advice administration, paraplanning, mortgage broking administration and bookkeeping team members and critical infrastructure we have developed over eight years across 950 team members.”

The appointment of Ms Thong follows the hires of Lia Gunawan as Strategic Relationship Manager and Hannah Pike as Client Services Specialist earlier this year. Ms Gunawan is tasked with refining and enhancing VBP’s strategic relationship management framework while Ms Pike is developing VBP’s financial planning assistants across complex administrative tasks.

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