Foundation Advice - proving the naysayers wrong

Almost a year ago to the day, Ratebroker’s financial advice business Foundation Advice launched an innovative scheme aimed at turning Covid-hit travel brokers into financial advisers.

Wednesday, December 15th 2021, 6:00AM

by Matthew Martin

Michael Moran.

Many scoffed at the idea but a year later the insurance advice firm has taken off and has plans to acquire several advisory firms, set up new offices around the country, train around 40 new advisors and launch a series of new tech products and services to generate high quality leads.

The business was set up to succeed from the top-down, says Foundation Advice director Michael Moran, and bringing on board a highly skilled and experienced management team that could mentor and coach its staff from day one is just one of the many secrets to the scheme's success.

Foundation Advice was formed at the peak of the Covid crisis and Moran says they now want to develop a training programme to bring at least 40 advisers per year into the sector working with industry training and compliance company Strategi.

He says advisors are attracted to them by Foundation's high-quality training and mentorship as well as flexible working hours and diversity.

By this time next year, he hopes to have around 100 advisers spread across the country.

"Some will come via our training with Strategi and our induction programme, some of our upcoming acquisitions will come with people, and some through word of mouth."

He says Foundation Advice is hoping to obtain its full Financial Advice Provider license in the first quarter of 2022 and is in talks with seven advisory firms to bring them into the company and "making other strategic acquisitions that complement our business and support quality advice".

"The Ratebroker platform generates thousands of quality and meaningful leads from people who actually want to talk about insurance."

Plans are also underway to expand their physical office space in Christchurch, Auckland, Wellington, Tauranga, Hamilton and Dunedin "...to provide more options for our people to work in a Covid-safe way for clients who may wish to meet physically rather than digitally, but still have hesitations about inviting people into their homes".

"Kiwis deserve high-quality financial advice and we recognise there are other high-quality advisers in the market that deserve to grow and be successful as much as we do.

"Over the next twelve months and beyond, you are going to see us deliver further on the promises we have made to our team, to our industry and to the wider community in Aotearoa New Zealand."

Tags: Foundation Advice insurance Insurance Advisers Ratebroker