IOOF CIO departs company following MLC acquisition

On Friday, the wealth giant confirmed that Sharam Hekmat will depart after five years with the company.

IOOF said it is currently “undertaking a program of work focused on organisational design”, and as such, responsibility of its tech division will now move to COO Frank Lombardo “under a new operating model”.

“Combining technology and operations more closely aligns technology with the product and platform simplification roadmap,” IOOF said in a statement.

“Concurrently, analysis has been undertaken on the integration roadmap since completion and has identified opportunities to accelerate product and platform simplification, subject to further evaluation, which may change the original technology approach.”

Mr Hekmat’s resignation comes after chief executive Renato Mota said the “early signs are quite positive” in relation to the MLC acquisition following the release of IOOF’s financial year 2021 results.

“It provides some significant opportunities from scale and a real competitive advantage in terms of capability and our ability to drive down the cost to serve,” Mr Mota said.

“As an integrated business, what we’ve built is a really mature approach to supporting change.

“While we’re going through a lot of change at the moment, it does give us confidence that we’ll be able to meet our commitments with respect to simplification.”

The acquisition of MLC, as well as ANZ P&I last year, now sees IOOF boast 2.2 million clients, with 1,975 financial advisers on board.

In its financial year results, IOOF revealed that its Advice 2.0 transformation program is “largely complete”, while 135 advisers have departed.

An additional 256 advisers have reported to join from Godfrey Pembroke and TenFifty, while another 406 advisers have joined from MLC Advice.

Neil Griffiths

Neil is the Deputy Editor of the wealth titles, including ifa and InvestorDaily.

Neil is also the host of the ifa show podcast.