RI Toowoomba doubles down on VBP partnership to support rapid growth

While RI Toowoomba Group has had an ongoing relationship with Vital Business Partners (VBP) since 2018, the advice group has recently doubled down on its partnership with the outsourcing specialist group, expanding its Philippine-based support staff from five to nine people.

In addition to bulking out the advice group’s support team, existing senior financial planning assistants also received upskill training to help them provide paraplanning services for its 13 financial advisers.

According to the advice group’s chief operating officer, Steve Browning, this expansion follows a year of rapid growth, achieved largely through mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity, creating an urgent need for more backend staff to support its operations across its five offices, located in the Gold Coast, Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast.

With the advice industry constantly battling a growing demand for service and a lack of new advisers, Browning said the firm has sought out growth opportunities through local acquisitions, helped along by the support of VBP.

“We’ve had some challenges in recent years, namely, too many clients and not enough advisers, so we set out to solve that problem by acquiring like-minded businesses in areas where we had existing clients but not a local presence,” Browning said.

“We identified areas where we had large cohorts of clients and found quality businesses and people that had capacity to take care of existing clients, look after our clients in the area, and continue growing too. With VBP, we’ve been able to support those businesses and focus on executing our strategy.”

VBP chief executive Nathan Jacobsen said that, as advice firms expand, services like those provided by VBP give them the capacity to chase new growth opportunities.

“Advisers are time-poor and many have ambitious goals and targets so they shouldn’t be distracted by day-to-day administration,” Jacobsen said.

“Demand for advice has never been higher, due to demographic changes, the increasing complexities of life, and heightened global economic and geopolitical uncertainty.

“Advisers are working extremely hard to help clients understand their position and manage their affairs. They need a trusted, experienced partner to come alongside them to help recruit, train and manage teams, so they can focus on helping people and growing their business.”

With its sights set on further growth, Browning said the partnership with VBP allows the firm to focus on M&A opportunities with the assurance that someone is on hand to build and manage their offshore support team.