BankWest stretches into super

HBOS Australia's wealth division, St Andrews, said it adapted its "Top 200" index-based managed fund to the superannuation space for distribution through BankWest and branded as "Lite Super".

Paul Northey, director of wealth management for St Andrews, said that following the acquisition of the RACV financial advice service and Whittaker McNaught, HBOS had endeavoured to devise some simpler, lower cost products to offer products suitable both for the advice channel and for direct sales through BankWest retail channels. HBOS is in the process of investing in a branch network on Australia's east coast for the first time.

"Our focus has been building up our financial advice network, we are up to 65 financial advisors now from 3 in 2005," said Northey.

"We definitely have an ambition to grow our funds management capability and build our advice network.

"Over time we want to be a significant player in advice and funds management and 90 per cent of the market is in super."

In the last 12 months St Andrews has increased funds under advice or management from $477 million to $2.4 billion.

"We launched Top 200 18 months ago and in fact we have had over 1400 investors get into it," which seems low.

Northey will take over as chief executive of St Andrews when John Van Der Wielen leaves next week to head up Clerical Medical in Britain.