Guardian Financial Planning is positioning itself as a life insurance specialist.

EM Simon Harris says there will be life insurance advisers who will want to move to a niche dealer group with this specialisation.

“It is a niche segment of the overall financial planning process,” he told insuranceNEWS.com.au.

The dealer group will still provide superannuation and investment advice as part of an overall advice package, which Mr Harris says are complementary to life insurance.

Although Guardian is owned by Suncorp, it is independently run and this enables the advisers to choose which products they sell.

“As an independent network not aligned to one of the big banks, Guardian has an open architecture in terms of our product list,” he said.

“Advisers don’t want to be told what to do by a big bank, but they want to work as an independent business person.”

Mr Harris says the group has a flexible approach to product choice and software the adviser wants to use.

“We think this will be attractive to advisers who want to leave a dealer group owned by a big institution that dictates what products they can use,” he said.

“But the potential advisers will have to fit into our culture, which is for more independently minded business people.”

The dealer group intends to grow its adviser numbers by about 10% a year.

Currently it has 150 advisers, and Mr Harris says the target is to have about 200 in three years.

“We think there are about 3000 advisers who are purely life insurance specialists and our growth strategy is to recruit from this pool,” he said.