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Financial planning giant abruptly tells advisers to sell Metrics funds

Primrose Riordan, Jonathan Shapiro and Sarah Thompson

Mar 19, 2025 – 5.00am

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One of the country’s largest financial planning networks is recommending its advisers sell holdings in at least three funds run by Metrics Credit Partners, launching a wide-ranging review of private credit to assess whether the returns are still worth the risk.

Count Financial says it has over 101,000 clients and a network of almost 550 financial advisers. Earlier this month, it told its advisers it was conducting an out-of-cycle review of private credit after an increase in instability in the asset class, which has grown exponentially as investors chase big returns, according to four people who had been briefed on the email.

Primrose Riordan covers private companies and family offices from the AFR's Sydney newsroom. Primrose was previously a correspondent for the Financial Times and covered foreign affairs and politics in Canberra. Primrose has won multiple awards for her journalism including from The National Press Club, SABEW in the US and Press Gazette in the UK. Message Primrose on Signal: https://tinyurl.com/PrimroseSignal

Jonathan Shapiro writes about banking and finance, specialising in hedge funds, corporate debt, private equity and investment banking. He is based in Sydney.

Sarah Thompson has co-edited Street Talk since 2009, specialising in private equity, investment banking, M&A and equity capital markets stories. Prior to that, she spent 10 years in London as a markets and M&A reporter at Bloomberg and Dow Jones.