Eyes on advice aspect of AMP half-year result

With AMP Limited scheduled to deliver its half-year results today there will be renewed focus on whether the company has managed to bring its financial advice business to break-even.

As well, there will be intense interest in whether the company will move key elements of the advice business into a genuine stand-alone structure in similar fashion to Insignia Financial.

These were two of the objectives for the advice business outlined by AMP chief executive, Alexis George, in her address to the company’s annual general meeting where she said AMP remained focused on achieving break-even in advice and was continuing to look at alternate structures for the advice business.

Not longer after George’s AGM comments, AMP group executive, Advice, Matt Lawler told Financial Newswire’s Advice Wealth and Super Conference that the advice business would be more sustainable if it sat outside of the costs of the broader AMP structure.

In the company’s full-year results released in February he company’s advice business recorded an underlying loss of $47 million which represented an improvement of 30.9% over the previous financial year.

Notwithstanding the progress made, few are expecting that the advice business will be marked as having achieved break-even in today’s half-year results announcement but many will be hoping for a clear-cut decision on the future of the advice business.

It will be remembered by many in the advice sector that it is now nearly a year since the announcement of the merger of Ironbark Investment Management and Invest Blue merged and the fact that a year earlier Washington H Soul Pattinson agreed to bankroll Ironbark to pursue its ambitions with respect to wealth management stakes.

Invest Blue has continued to operate as an authorised representative of AMP Financial Planning.

AMP’s share price was trading at $1.15 on the ASX.