Luke Sayers looks to ‘change age’ in next chapter

Could this be the opportunity to rewrite the rule book around wealth in this country?

Luke Sayers (right) and Neville Azzopardi, who are the new principals of the firm known as Sayers. Picture: Aaron Francis/The Australian

It was a party befitting a major milestone in the life of Luke ­Sayers.

His 50th birthday celebration in the gardens of his expansive home in the leafy Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn just over a year ago boasted an A-list roll-up of the nation’s corporate and political elite. Even trucking billionaire Lindsay Fox and Premier Daniel Andrews enjoyed themselves so much they stayed until the early hours of the morning.

But turning 50 proved a ­moment of reflection for Sayers and Cate, his wife of 24 years.

The then chief executive of the local arm of big four accounting giant PwC had given his retirement notice after eight years in the job and was contemplating life beyond the firm.

“I had just turned 50 and was thinking ‘what is the third chapter of my meaningful, professional life?’ I went through a great process with Egon Zehnder who took me through a very ‘family and Luke’ sort of process. ‘What does this 50-65 period look like for you and the family?’,’’ Sayers tells The Weekend Australian.

He quickly ruled out a portfolio of non-executive directorships and junked the thought of being the CEO of a publicly listed company, “given the political environment we have in Australia at the moment”, he says. Private equity was also ruled out.

“Friends and advisers said they wanted to back me doing my own thing. Putting that together, Cate and I said ‘let’s have a crack’,” Sayers says.

It led to the launch in September of a firm known as Sayers, which its namesake calls an advisory and investment business built for the modern “change age”, backed by half a dozen wealthy Australian families and a big American family of similar ilk. Hardly surprisingly — although Sayers won’t confirm it — the Fox family is believed to be one of the locals.

“We have the first boat set to be launched. Over the course of the next six to 18 months there will be other boats that will also be launched under the Sayers umbrella,’’ he says of the firm’s first venture, a full-service wealth advisory business know as Sayers Wealth, aimed at Australian high-net-worth families and for purpose organisations.

Former JBWere adviser Nev­ille Azzopardi has been appointed CEO of Sayers Wealth, leading a team that brings expertise from across wealth and business advisory. They include two other former JBWere execs, James Wright and Jason Chequer.

Azzopardi says the firm has grand ambitions.

“On the near-term horizon we want to get to 60 advisers in the business and 100 staff (it now has 35),” he says.

“In terms of asset size, over the next five years this will be north of $10bn in assets and the sky is the limit thereafter.

“The numbers will be evidence of the value proposition.”

Sayers Wealth’s clients will have a minimum net worth of at least $5m.

The new firm plans to have an initial presence in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, with a longer-term ambition to be in Perth. Sayers wants to make it clear that “we are not a small boutique or a family office for family offices’’, saying: “We want to be very much focused on that $10bn goal after five years.”

The move by Sayers comes as $4 trillion is projected to be passed between generations over the next 20 years as the patriarchs and mat­riarchs of millions of Australian businesses hand over control to their children, according to PwC.

The big four banks have been busy in the past year offloading their retail financial advice businesses following the horrors of the Hayne royal commission.

In the high-net-worth space, ANZ earlier this year hired former HSBC local private bank CEO Hayden Matthews — whose clients notably include Gina Rinehart — to build out a specialised family office business for the mega-wealthy.

Matthews has been focusing on clients worth at least $250m, offering the full suite of private banking to ANZ’s wealthy.

The big offshore banks, with the exception of Credit Suisse, have had a tough time making inroads into the Australian ultra-wealthy private banking market in recent years.

Instead, boutique firms such as Crestone, Escala, Koda, Evans & Partners and Hamilton Wealth Partners have been snapping up business.

Azzopardi says that while there are some wonderful high-net-wealth providers in this country, they all have their niches: they tend to stay in their own swimming lanes.

“Our approach is to swim across the lanes. We are not going to have a niche per se,’’ he says.

“We also go to the softer side, trying to understand the family dynamics, where does philanthropy play a role, etc.”

While technology has largely been used in the wealth management industry for regulatory compliance and as a tool for advisers, there is little that is client-facing.

And where it is, it is often simply for providing static information to clients on a strictly one-way basis.

Sayers Wealth has teamed with a Melbourne-based fintech known as MyProsperity to offer clients a real-time “whole of wealth”, balance-sheet snapshot of an individual or family’s finances.

“It is still so disaggregated in our industry, from the bank account here, the credit card here, the art portfolio and the cars from the business. So to use technology to present the holistic picture back to the client is important,” Azzopardi says.

“We are taking a digital approach — people should be able to have their iPhone, read it and sign with their finger, these days. And they will be able to do that.”

Sayers Wealth will initially start with the Powerwrap and Netwealth investment platforms, but will go further.

“What we have also done is we have executed agreements with a European and an Asian private bank which gives us a really great breadth of capability. That can match the breadth of solution the platform provides with the needs of the client,’’ Azzopardi says.

“We are leveraging the scale of these private banks. We have full access to the investments on those platforms, but also we have access to the expertise that sits behind that: the research for the clients and our investment team will work with their investment teams around the globe. The idea is to be able to get the benefits of global scale right from day one.”

In February, Sayers will launch what its founding chairman calls its “second boat”: a deals and advisory business. The firm has recruited several former PwC partners including Peter Mastos, Richard Shackcloth, Nikhil de Silva and Sammy Kumar.

“As we scan the market, we see the opportunity to put the wealth and the deals piece together in a unique way,” Sayers says. “Plus Sayers will also be a co-investor in the deals and be 100 per cent aligned on value creation over the medium to long term.”

The firm’s first move was to take a strategic stake in Melbourne technology company Elenium, which has developed a multifunctional health screening device for COVID-19 and other potential illnesses.

A former co-founder of Judo Bank, Kate Keenan — who has joined Sayers along with her former Judo Bank exec Mal Hiscock, says Sayers’ motto will be “New quo”.

“We are not happy with the status quo. Things can be done better,” she says.

She says Sayers has five core values focused around people.

“It is all about the quality of the people we are bringing on board,” she says. “They have been hand-selected — they embody the values that Luke has. Thinking free is a big part of our values. Luke talks a lot about creative thinking. That is refreshing.

“Our goal or our purpose is to be a catalyst for system change. We want to use the power of technology and people combined to do better things.”

Indeed Sayers, one of the best-connected people in Australian business — especially in Melbourne — says many families that drive the nation’s economy have been looking for a higher, more meaningful level of servicing of their wealth needs.

“We are an independent provider with awesome people who can take a holistic approach rather than just an equites approach, coupled with global leading edge technology,” Sayers says.

“I think this industry is ripe for a much more meaningful proposition. This is the opportunity to rewrite the rule book around wealth in this country.”