Financial advisers and accountants Crowe Horwath says its life and general insurance sales grew 10% in the year to June 30.

Life insurance revenue moved to $8.5 million from $7.7 million the previous year, while general insurance revenue increased to $3.2 million from $2.9 million.

Crowe Howarth is the fifth-largest accountancy and financial advisory company in Australia, and also has offices in New Zealand.

Upfront revenue from the financial planning business grew 11% to $7.2 million, driven by cross-referrals.

Ongoing revenue was $45.4 million, up just $200,000 on the previous year.

MD John Lombard says the insurance operations made strong contributions to the financial planning division’s overall revenue of $52.7 million.

Crowe Horwath has now completed its transformation project, which involved changing its name from WHK.

The program, including a leadership restructure and a new remuneration model for principals, incurred redundancy and other costs of $7.2 million.

Mr Lombard says the softening economy will make trading conditions “challenging”.

“The initiatives completed during the… financial year to drive more efficient operations will be essential in a period of continued subdued business activity.

“Like [last financial year], we intend to remain focused on organic revenue growth, cost control, tightly managing cashflow from operations and margin improvement across financial services operations.”

He says the company will expand the use of cloud-based technology to create service efficiencies and leverage off the common Crowe Horwath brand.