Value of advice driving PE interest says Barrett

Mike Taylor

Managing Editor and Publisher

30 March 2026

The fact that financial advisers have become increasingly professional and are no longer regarded as just a product distribution channel partly explains why global private equity (PE) players are paying increasing attention to Australian wealth management businesses.

That is the assessment of AZ-NGA chief executive, Paul Barrett who told Financial Newswire’s Advice Wealth and Super Conference that the major PE players recognise the value and the potential of wealth aggregation.

Barratt’s comments followed questioning around not only the Oaktree investment in AZ NGA but also Bain Capital’s upcoming acquisition of Perpetual’s wealth management business and the CC Capital acquisition of Insignia Financial.

“PE firms are not stupid,” he said. “They have invested in wealth aggregation in the United Kingdom and the US and they recognise the potential here in Australia.”

Barrett said the firms were not particularly interested in such investments before the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services sector when financial advisers were seen as a distribution network.

“Now that financial advisers have become professionalised and the value chain has inverted, that is what is attracting PE money,” he said noting that in North America wealth aggregation assets could attract multiples of up to 22 times EBITDA.

“It remains to be seen what multiples can be extracted on Australia,” Barrett said.

He said that in a very real sense the power dynamic in wealth had shifted over the past two decades when fund managers and platforms were seen as the heroes.

“I never really understood why advisers weren’t the heroes,” Barrett said. “The advisers owned the client relationship.”

He said that the reality was that the power has shifted and that financial advisers are coming together in power groups and that those are not licensee groups.

“They are forming advice platforms, getting together and pooling their IP, best practice and systems.”