Case Studies
Issue No. 19 - October/November 2004
Lifeplan Funds Management
Planned Success
Lifeplan Funds Management is the quintessential quiet achiever.
Lifeplan Australia Friendly Society Limited, as it’s properly known, is a funds manager respected enough to provide rebadged services to dozens of Australian blue-chip companies.
The surprisingly small firm is the modern amalgamation of friendly societies – Norwich Union Friendly Society; Investment Action; StateGuard; Manchester Unity IOOF; Mutual Community Friendly Society; National Pharmacies; Australian Natives Association; Foresters; Hibernians; Protestant Alliance; Free Gardeners; and Savings and Loans Friendly Society – the oldest of them founded 163 years ago.
Today, Lifeplan has over $1 billion in funds under management. We have also been listed in the BRW Top 500 Private Companies for the last 6 years.
MD Chris Wright is happy to be playing in a much bigger league, and ready to seek some well-deserved kudos. The company’s challenge is to come out from behind the scenes and gain the profile it needs to grow further.
And recent growth has been meteoric. “Over the past decade Lifeplan has grown from around $70 million in funds under management to over $1.1 billion today and we now rank number one in some of our niches nationally, as well as in the top 20 retail discretionary fund managers nationally,” Chris says.
“Our head office and core operations are here, but we are making substantial inroads interstate.
“For example, we now do what I call ‘export financial services’ to the eastern seaboard’.
“Three years ago we cracked the 50% mark with sales from outside SA and now we get 65% of our funds from outside SA – all managed here.
“Our strategies will eventually see us getting inflows from interstate more representative of the wealth distribution of the country.”
Lifeplan considers itself “an innovative niche player in a large global market”, a strategic positioning that has paid off –...
