Macquarie to remove grandfathered commissions

The business announced yesterday that it will stop receiving grandfathered commissions as part of a strategic move to improve client experience.

“The decision to discontinue grandfathered product commissions is part of our continued business transformation and in order to further increase transparency and demonstrate value to our clients,” a Macquarie Group spokesperson said.

The change will see all grandfathered commissions paid to Macquarie Private Wealth and Macquarie Private Bank advisers (affecting more than 17,000 client accounts) switched off from 1 April 2019.

“For independent financial advisers currently receiving grandfathered payments through our wealth third party channels, this has no impact on those arrangements, which will continue,” the spokesperson added.

The decision follows similar changes made by BT in June, which saw the removal of grandfathered commission payments to salaried advisers working through Westpac, St George, Bank of Melbourne and BankSA.

“Five years on [from FOFA], more than 140,000 BT Advised customer accounts are still subject to these grandfathered payments,” BT said at the time.

“We have considered this position from both a customer and a stakeholder perspective and decided that it is the right time to draw a line under these past arrangements and eliminate them as far as we are contractually able.”