Thursday 13th February 2025
Levera Filling the Missing Link for Tasmanian Advice firm
Melbourne-based Link Wealth Group has acquired its fourth advice practice, buying a majority stake in Hobart-based full-service financial advisory firm, Sky Advisers.
Melbourne-based advisory firm Link Wealth Group has taken its expansion strategy to the Apple Isle for the first time, buying-out the 60 per cent stake in Moonah-based Sky Advisers held by retiring managing director David Allen. Principal Daniel McCarthy, who is staying on, holds the remainder.
Sky Advisers will adopt Link Wealth Group’s business model, which is to invest in selected practices, and bolt-on its proprietary Levera Solutions business to outsource crucial administrative tasks to a specialist offshore operation, leaving the streamlined practice free to concentrate on serving more clients, focusing on professionals and business owners in their wealth accumulation phase, typically aged between 30 and 55. In addition, Link applies to new purchases its home-grown marketing strategy, with a heavy emphasis on social media.
“All of that back-office paperwork – the administrative ‘grunt’ work – moves onto Levera,” says Stephen Sloane (pictured), founder, managing director and adviser at Link Wealth Group. The Philippines-based Levera provides services including the end-to-end advice implementation processes and associated paperwork; accounting; CRM management; data entry; compliance; marketing; process consulting; and all other back-office requirements.
“With all that taken care of, the practice can invest in the front end of its business, spending more time on clients, recruiting more advisers and creating more front-end service roles,” says Sloane.
“That in turn drives scale. Scale is not just growth, it is building efficiencies in your practice that allow you to increase your capability in a profitable way,” he says.
Sky Advisers fits the template perfectly. “We weren’t looking at Tasmania as an expansion target originally, but this opportunity came up and it looked really good,” says Sloane. “David and Daniel run a highly professional operation that we feel shares our values, has the scope to grow, and wants to grow.
“For this to work, the cultural fit is absolutely critical; we want to have that growth mindset continue, adapt and push forward. And we need at least one of the practice principals to stay: it can’t happen without that.”
The expansion strategy is central to Link Wealth Group’s ambition of becoming the “go-to financial advice practice on the eastern seaboard” for the mid-market, a goal that Sloane set when establishing the firm in Melbourne in 2012. At the time, it was just him and a hot desk. The Group now has ten authorised representatives, with another eight associates undertaking their professional year (PY) commitments though Link’s Adviser Academy.
“The Adviser Academy is a huge part of the strategy,” he said. “It is increasingly difficult to source high-quality advisers, so we decided to build our own pipeline, to train our own staff internally.”
Sky Advisers will follow that path: Sloane plans to divert two of the firm’s six back-office staff into advisers, taking it from one adviser to three advisers, with a fourth joining by the end of 2026. There will not be job losses as a result of the acquisition; instead, says Sloane, advisers and staff will be able to focus on high-impact client work rather than administrative tasks, ensuring they can dedicate more time to delivering the best possible financial outcomes.
“We’re not just acquiring firms, we’re strengthening them,” explains Sloane. “By reducing the operational load on advisers, we’re allowing them to focus on what truly matters, guiding their clients toward financial security and success. Our goal is to triple Sky Advisers’ business, not by changing its core values, but by amplifying what already makes it great. We want to ensure that every client receives top-tier service and every team member has the support they need to grow and excel.”
Link Wealth Group currently manages the finances of about 800 families, a number it wants to push to 2,000 in two years. “Scaling-up the business through acquisition is a focus, as is marketing to new audiences. For example, Sky Advisers advises 150 families, but we believe we can lift that number to 300.”
Having pleasantly surprised itself in conducting due diligence on Sky Advisers, Sloane said Link Wealth was interested in further acquisitions in Tasmania. “We’re looking at acquiring another four or five firms over the next 12 months, in Queensland and Melbourne, but we’ve discovered another two or three more firms in Tasmania that could fit the model.”
Just don’t call it “aggregation” — Sloane does not think the term fits. “We’re not a licensee. We’re just executing on that original strategy of growing our presence on the eastern seaboard, and that’s it. We’re just there to provide that growth engine room for these businesses that probably couldn’t do it themselves. If they could do it themselves, they probably wouldn’t join us – but we provide the growth strategy, the operations, the efficiency, the productivity through all our systems, Levera and marketing,” he said.
“We see it as simply facilitating growth, for like-minded people. There are private equity firms in the market trying to aggregate, but they can’t add the value that we can, because they’re not on the ground, doing it day-to-day, like we are,” says Sloane.
James is an experienced senior journalist and editor of The Inside Network's publications.
