RI Toowoomba doubles back-office support team with PH hires

Regional financial planning business RI Toowoomba Group has announced a significant expansion of its paraplanning and back-office capability in an effort to meet growing client demand, confirming a new outsourcing deal with Vital Business Partners (VBP).

The regional Queensland-based planning firm has confirmed the addition of four new financial planning assistants as well as upskilling arrangements for existing senior financial planning assistants to provide paraplanning services.

This nearly doubles the number of Philippines-based outsourced staff from VBP, up from a team of five to the current nine back-office staff.

Locally, the RI Toowoomba has 35 employees, including thirteen advisers, spread across five locations in Queensland, including Brisbane, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast and Central Queensland.

The planning firm said its business strategy is focused on achieving scale in key markets, expanding into new regions, and enhancing operational efficiency.

RI Toowoomba chief operating officer Steve Browning said the new hires would support the significant growth achieved by the business over the past year, primarily through M&A, creating an urgent need for capable back-office resources to support the group’s advice team.

Browning recognised the firm’s long-standing partnership with VBP – an Australian-owned financial services admin support business which boasts a 1,200-member staff based in the Philippines’ key outsourcing hub, Cebu – since 2018.

He said the near-doubling of VBP support staff would ensure the business could “continue to deliver reliable service and operational excellence.”

“VBP gives us the confidence to focus on M&A opportunities and continue growing because we know they are there to support us to scale our back-office, and build and manage our offshore team.”

Browning added: “We’ve had some challenges in recent years, namely too many clients and not enough advisers, so we set out to solve that problem by acquiring like-minded businesses in areas where we had existing clients but not a local presence.”

Established in 1992, RI Toowoomba Group specialises in financial planning and retirement advice to mass affluent clients across regional Queensland.

VBP, a specialist outsourcing business for financial services organisations, has partnered with more than 250 FSIs across Australia since its founding in 2013.