Compliance Refinery expands

The Compliance Refinery is expanding its workforce and has taken on an experienced adviser advocate with more hires on the horizon.

Friday, July 16th 2021, 4:18PM

by Matthew Martin

Compliance Refinery chief executive Steven Burgess says he's brought Melanie Purdey into the fold and expects to announce more staff recruitments in the coming month.

"We share a lot of the same values and were chatting after she left AIA and thought she would be quite a good fit.

"Melanie has been with us for about two weeks now and we are quite excited to have her on board," says Burgess.

"Our overall approach will be helping advisers navigate the new regime, whatever their choices are."

Purdey was most recently head of aligned advice at AIA NZ and is the former chief executive at Newpark Financial Services and northern sales manager for the Medical Assurance Society.

She's also a freelance adviser advocate and was a business development manager at Westpac from 2004 to 2010.

She says she's keen to help support advisers in a new more regulated world and has been honing her governance and mentoring skills to help manage their businesses.

Burgess says the compliance side of the industry has become a lot busier recently and "...quite frankly should be busier".

"But the market is still digesting those [regulatory] changes and we'll be bringing on someone else relatively soon, so there's no resting on our laurels here.

"There's still a large group of businesses that haven't really engaged that much to this point - not necessarily with us - but with anybody."

He says Purdey will be working on some projects in the 'group space' and will be helping to release some new product lines.

"We've been growing quickly and there's a real need in the market for good adviser business support, compliance and training."

Tags: compliance Compliance Refinery Melanie Purdey recruitment Steve Burgess