Founder and Managing Director, Darren Steinhardt confirmed, ‘We are delighted to announce that we have appointed Mr Steve Davis to the position of Chief Commercial Officer for Infocus.’

Steinhardt added, ‘Steve is an experienced, enthusiastic financial services professional, a great team player, and someone who will bring outstanding commercial acumen and strategic direction to our business.

Using his talent, expertise and fresh perspective, Steve will help execute our growth plans, help Infocus and our advisers maximize the opportunities we’ve identified in the market and no doubt, find new and exciting ways to ensure we build on our positive momentum well in to our future.’

‘We believe Steve will be a great cultural fit for Infocus, partly because, like the majority of our senior leadership team, he has spent time as a financial adviser which helps him to have real empathy with the challenges our advisers face in helping clients achieve their financial and lifestyle goals.

Steve also passionately believes in the difference that good advice can make to clients and as such is very well-aligned with Infocus.

It is understood Mr Davis will take up the newly created CCO position from 1 August, based at the Infocus head office in the enviable lifestyle location of Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.

‘The appointment of Steve Davis, together with our announcements last week that Jeff Mitchell will join us as Chief Investment Officer, and Craig Meldrum as Head of Technical Services, signals our clear intent for a future focused on advice and a team resourced with outstanding talent across the Infocus business,’ concluded Steinhardt.

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Simon Wu

The companies announced this morning that they have executed a non-binding indicative offer under which Australian Unity Personal Financial Services would acquire all the shares in Premium Wealth Management.

The board of Premium Wealth Management is recommending to shareholders that they consider the terms of acquisition with Australian Unity.

Australian Unity said its desire is to retain the Premium brand strategy, operating model and client proposition.

Commenting on the potential acquisition, Australian Unity Personal Financial Services CEO Mr Steve Davis said the addition of Premium would increase Australian Unity’s financial advice capability and its exposure in the accountants’ space.

“It should also better position Australian Unity Personal Financial Services to take advantage of opportunities arising from the significant regulatory and environmental changes impacting the profession,” he said.

Mr Davis added: “Premium is a successful business, with a high quality group of advisers that has substantial revenue, funds under advice and clients, and will be a significant contributor to increasing the scale and strength of Australian Unity Personal Financial Services.

“Importantly, it will be business as usual for Premium’s authorised representatives and clients,” he said.

Premium Wealth Management chairman and founder, Mr Simon Wu, said his board is attracted to Australian Unity for many reasons, including their long term involvement in the accountants’ market and that they clearly see the value of Premium and recognise the quality of their practices.

“Also, Australian Unity is culturally and philosophically aligned with us.  They are a well respected 174 year old mutual and they have always prioritised client best interest and advisory integrity, and have an open architecture environment for investments and insurances,” Mr Wu said.

Mr Paul Harding-Davis, CEO of Premium, said FoFA was a catalyst for Premium to explore other options.

“FoFA effectively closed down many organic growth options, and it became clear we would need to either engage in mergers and acquisitions of our own, or invite a like-minded organisation to partner with us, to enable us to compete in a predominately vertically integrated world.

“In the end, we think the option of engaging with a culturally aligned entity to acquire us makes sense and will, we believe, deliver the most benefits to each shareholder and practice,” he said.

The acquisition requires approval by Premium shareholders and the Australian Unity board, and is subject to due diligence by Australian Unity Personal Financial Services.

The acquisition, should it proceed, is expected to take effect on October 2014.

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Steve Davis, Chief Executive Officer of AU PFS, said Federation offers advisers and their clients clear value for money and this, coupled with operational structure and the option for clients to become shareholders in Federation Alliance, made it a unique offer in the platform market.

“We made the decision to put Federation on our preferred platform list primarily to take advantage of the structure of the platform, which operates as an IDPS-like managed investment scheme,” Mr Davis says.

“This structure allows us to build our model portfolios into the platform and our advisers can use them to better automate the investment management process for their clients.”

Mr Davis says the Federation structure means it operates like a managed discretionary account (MDA), but without requiring any variation to the advice licence or the additional compliance requirements for advisers that are usually required to operate an MDA.

It also offers efficiency benefits. “As a result of some of the additional administrative burden under the FoFA regime, we believe helping our advisers operate a more efficient practice is even more important. Federation helps our advisers to significantly improve the efficiency of the advice process,” Mr Davis says.

“Adding Federation was also a way to provide advisers with an alternative to the platforms owned by the major banks/institutions.

“We see there being a place for both institutional and independent platform models – they key for us is to give advisers the choice,” Mr Davis says.

“This is becoming even more important in a post FoFA world where advisers need to be even clearer in relation to meeting their obligations under their best interests duty.”

Mr Davis says PFS’ primary focus is to help its advisers continue the strong growth they have been experiencing in revenue, FUM and risk insurance business, but that further growth for PFS is also on the agenda.

“We do expect to continue to grow adviser numbers and more importantly plan to continue to strongly grow our network of accountants as referral partners and advisers,” Mr Davis says.

“In May 2011 we hit the $1 billion in funds under advice milestone and had 72 advisers. As at 31 December 2013 we were up to $3.2 billion in FUA with 117 advisers.

“There is going to be continuing convergence between the accounting and advice professions and we are well placed to help support accountants provide high quality financial services to their clients.

“Federation, and its ability to facilitate automated direct equity portfolios, can be a very complementary investment structure for accountants and their SMSF clients, who appreciate the transparency and ownership of direct equities, but are less interested in day to day management of the portfolio” Mr Davis says.

Richard Dixon, Chief Operating Officer of Federation Alliance, said Federation Managed Accounts is a comprehensive investment administration platform that provides easy access to a broad range of investment options

“As technology delivers further efficiencies and cost savings in this competitive part of the market, Federation’s equity participation option provides an effective way to pass future benefits to clients.”

Mr Dixon says work has begun on a superannuation vehicle which is expected to launch in the second quarter of this year.

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