Viridian targets double-digit growth

Viridian Financial chief executive Raamy Shahien told Financial Standard he is focused on continuing to grow the business through hires and more mergers and acquisitions (M&A), targeting a double-digit growth rate.

"We've always been clear that growth is an objective of ours. And if you look historically, we've delivered a growth rate not far off 20% year on year," Shahien said.

"Naturally as a business grows, it becomes more challenging to grow at those sorts of rates without M&A, but we're not shying away from having a huge internal, organic opportunity."

Shahien said while the firm is still actively chasing the right M&A opportunities, the focus has also shifted to adding advisers, with around 13 advisers already having joined this year, eight of which were external hires.

"From an adviser size point we'll go from 96 to 109 this year. So that's giving an indication in terms of our seriousness around the growth story. We don't see that just being an M&A piece. We do think we can continue to deliver double digit growth rates purely just from our organic growth, let alone what the M&A opportunity looks like," he said.

Shahien said Viridian's investment offering through Infinity will also continue to expand. It now has more than $6 billion in funds under management.

"We're seeing increasing demand from advisers for businesses to take greater responsibility for investment outcomes, particularly as the industry responds to recent disruption and a sharper focus on governance and accountability," Shahien said.

Shahien said as the advice sector faces scrutiny, now is the time for advisers to be proactive.

"The industry has had lots of different evolutions in terms of being bashed and being really successful, right? It's been quite a roller coaster. I think the public is becoming more attuned to the fact that there are concentrated issues as opposed to being industry-wide," he said.

"But we still have a responsibility to do something about that, and so our focus, or the best way to we see that happening, is actually enabling our advisers more effectively from a tech perspective, or simplifying processes to try to make the client experience not as complex as what it is today."

He said it's also important for the advice industry to shift mindset and move from being a reactive relationship to a proactive relationship.

"I think that's the biggest change that we can all make as an industry that will impact people's confidence in the execution delivery of advice," he said.

"So rather than seeing your clients once, twice or four times a year depending on an arrangement, actually turning that around and being really proactive on an engagement level, we think will shift confidence in our industry."