Yellow Brick Road (YBR) has acquired online advice platform brightday from News Corp.
The addition of brightday is the latest in a series of acquisitions for YBR. While previous acquisitions have contributed to the business’ scale, this acquisition will provide an important capability for the company’s digital strategy the company says.
Executive Chairman Mark Bouris says Yellow Brick Road’s and brightday’s common partnership with OneVue, an independent investment software platform, allows for a logical and simple integration.
“This acquisition is a key part of our direct and online strategy to be launched to consumers in FY17,” Mr Bouris explained.
“brightday serves a similar customer segment to Yellow Brick Road. Our 2020 customer strategy ensures we can serve customers via the means and channel they prefer: many will prefer face-to-face support which is why we will double our branch network by 2020, while others have a bias towards direct-digital product, and the majority will seek a blend of both. The acquisition of brightday helps enable this.”
Consistent investment in consumer-facing advertising over five years has built a strong brand which Yellow Brick Road intends to leverage in the digital space. Mr Bouris said that this brand awareness is already yielding direct inquiries from many customers for insurance, as well as some funds management and superannuation product.
“This digital push is focussed first and foremost on accelerating our wealth business growth. We want 30 per cent of our customers accessing our wealth services by 2020. Wealth is a real differentiator for us and a major focus over the next four years.”
“Giving customers superior digital access and tools for investments and superannuation is an important tactic in building our wealth volumes. We have already seen great engagement through Guru, our robo pre-advice tool. brightday is the next enhancement,” Mr Bouris concluded.
