Advice firms join forces to ‘change clients’ lives’

On Monday, Esencia Wealth announced the opening of its new Sydney office at Governor Phillip Tower, combining Advise Wise, Insight Private Wealth, Sovereign Wealth Partners, and Randle Advisory into a single firm “dedicated to helping Australians make life-changing decisions with their money”.

Matthew Fenning, newly appointed CEO of Esencia, said: “Our four firms have come together to capture the opportunity in a diverged market to build a world-class advice business – one that enhances the existing ethos of each firm to use financial advice as a mechanism for changing clients’ lives.”

The new leadership team of Esencia will also include former Macquarie executive Jeffrey Wrightson as managing partner, Insight Private Wealth principal Sam Stillone as head of growth, and former Shadforth Financial Group co-founder and director Jim Kilkenny as chairman. The firm said it has plans to build on this expertise with additional hires.

Speaking with ifa, Fenning said the goal for Esencia was to build an advice firm with an “enduring legacy of change in clients’ lives”.

“What we recognised to do so was an alignment of culture and a shared future. Over the past couple of years, we’ve been working with these firms and a few others along the way,” he said.

“I think we’ve all been asking ourselves the same question, which is, what’s the appropriate path for growth? How do I plan for the long-term future of my business in the post-royal commission world – what a number of people have referred to as advice 2.0.”

The answer for Esencia, Fenning explained, was that the simplest approach would be to harness the strengths of each business with a goal to creating that single integrated firm, while also keeping an eye out for more firms that would be good fits.

“Today is an important step for us along that journey,” he said.

“What we’ve also worked on during that period is creating a proposition that will allow us to identify other partners who share that vision with a view to expanding further in Sydney, as well as in Melbourne and Brisbane. But fundamentally today, we’re excited to have taken this step and excited for what the future brings.”

Currently Esencia’s client groups include high-net-worth families, professionals, retirees, and medicos, while also offering advice by women for women. The business added that it will look to utilise a “house of niches” approach to attracting new clients as part of its growth strategy.

The way that Esencia will go about that growth strategy, Fenning told ifa, is through identifying firms that are culturally aligned in their commitment to clients.

“It needs to be a firm with absolute integrity. It needs to be a firm with a history of excellence in doing what they’re doing,” he said.

“It needs to be a firm that’s preferably focused on servicing a niche or a series of niches of clients. But fundamentally for us, it’s about getting that culture right because everything else flows from that.

“It’s about having the vision and the ambition to pursue this goal of being a world-class advice firm that changes people’s lives. These are big goals and you need to be able to aspire to that if we’re going to get together.”