Troup takes Body blow
[UPDATED with COMMENTS] ANZ has announced the establishment of a new wealth management business and the departure of current OnePath chief executive Helen Troup.
Wednesday, November 10th 2010, 5:14AM 
9 Comments
Troup is leaving the business after tidyng up the CDO fund mess and managing ANZ's transition to full ownership of OnePath (formerly ING New Zealand).
The new wealth business will be headed by the current private banking and wealth managing director John Body.
The new wealth business, ANZ Wealth, aims to create a simpler, integrated business structure bringing together all of ANZ's wealth business brands including OnePath, Wealth Direct and the investment and insurance specialists in the ANZ and National Bank brands.
"It's now the right time to develop a more integrated approach for our wealth businesses and brands," ANZ New Zealand CEO David Hisco said.
"The new wealth business will help deliver complete investment and insurance solutions for our customers in New Zealand and support our growth aspirations in the segment through the continued commitment we have to both the bank and independent advisors."
In a letter to advisers Hisco says: "Although our organisational structure has changed, the things you value about your relationship with OnePath haven’t."
"This includes our continued commitment to independent advisors and the valued contribution you make to our business.
"We strongly advocate the importance of quality financial advice and John (Body) will ensure OnePath remains your reliable and trusted partner."
Body says there is a trend worldwide for banks to increase their operations in the wealth management space and this move is another example of that happening.
He says ANZ has been offering wealth management services. Its private bank deals with clients with more than $1 million; its investment specialists look after people with between $250,000 and $1 milliion while Wealth Direct is for people with less than quarter of a million dollars. The fourth part of the business, for lower value clients, is KiwiSaver.
Body says while the bank is bringing parts of its business together it is not competing with IFAs.
"We are not building a wealth division to compete with IFAs," he says.
For him it is business as usual for Onepath and its relationship with IFAs.
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Comments from our readers
There are three stories here - firstly a leader who builds compared to one who fixes, a business looking for a complete freshness and new start and thirdly whether to have focus or leveraging scale.
The existing ING / Onepath CEO seems to have done a strong job at fixing problems and dealing with issues in the past and this is referenced in the ANZ press release thanking her. A different approach is maybe now required – building and looking ahead. Rather than expect the MD to change their way of working it is sometimes easier to have a new person. Credit should be given to the existing CEO.
Onepath is a new brand and ANZ will want to create some freshness – having a new CEO is part of doing this just like the new colour and new brand – creating some distance.
ING was a product manufacturer with multiple entry points to consumers – ANZ is much more a scale player who plays in all aspects of the value chain. ANZ is clearly wanting to leverage scale by integrating across the businesses. Sometimes this means a loss of focus – it will be interesting whether nimble competitors (without the scale and capital though) will be able to outmanoeuvre.
Hopefully the consumer will end up a winner – the changes are in many ways irrelevant to advisers as long as ANZ executes this well – that will be the thing the watch.
Finally in a short period of time the ING MD appears to have created a strong brand and contributed positively to NZers having a positive view of product manufacturers and advisers – well done to her for that.
As predicted previously, the current ING model (satisfying the needs of IFAs in exchange for support) will fade away & be a fond memory within the next few years.
The advice for those IFAs who have aligned themselves (a euphemism for “are reliant”) with the ING handouts, is to ensure that their business is self sufficient going forward. The alternative is to morph into bank aligned product sales-folks.
I do wish to say though that Helen Troup deserves some applause in my view. I do not know the lady personally, however like everyone else I have watched how she has handled an abyssmal situation in the last couple of years. It was not a problem she was involved in creating it seems, yet she appeared to handle it with aplomb and poise as far as I could tell.
Well done Helen. Good luck for the future.
Looking at the ingnz website many of the execs who were during the CDO set-up era to be still there on the ingnz exec team or in the funds man team. The person who inherited and sorted the mess out leaves and they stay (for how long?)
Looking forward to a Phil blog on this !!
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