HOME Building Society has radically altered its business direction during the past year from that of home lender and property developer to financial planner.
While still only a relatively small portion of the society’s business – about $130 million – is already under manage-ment, managing director Jim Freemantle expects this figure to more than double in the next three to four years.
“Its going to be a key driver of our business in the future we think,” Mr Freemantle said.
“You’ve now got the government saying that they want everyone to fund their own retirement. So there is going to be a lot of money that is going to have to be set aside by a lot of people to fund future lifestyles.
“The laws surrounding superannuation are so complex that none of us, useless you are an expert, will be able to keep up with it.
“So I think more and more people are going to end up having to get advice.
“Planning advice, tax-ation advice and all the things that go with it.
“It’s pushing into another area of the financial services market where we have some core expertise here.
“We have a client base, we have a lot of financial products and we think we understand the financial services market reason-ably well, so it’s a fairly logical place to go.
“People now don’t regard term deposits as an investment, they regard it as a holding pen until they want to do other things with their money, hence if you are going to be in the business of attracting deposits from the public you aren’t going to attract them just as deposits.
“You are going to have to manage them and give them better returns.”
