CountPlus has announced the $9 million acquisition of Accurium from Challenger to expand its core service delivery to accounting firms and self-managed super funds (SMSFs) across Australia.
Under the terms of the deal, CountPlus would hold an 85% shareholding in Accurium with key management personnel holding 15%. Douglas McBirnie would become managing director of Accurium and all current serving team members would be retained by the business.
Matthew Rowe, CountPlus chief executive and managing director, said the firm had a strong platform to leverage the CountPlus competitive advantage within the accounting and SMSF administration service sector in Australia.
The move followed an earlier announcement of a 51% acquisition of Wealth Axis, a paraplanning, technology and administration services business and would be the second transaction under the firm’s ‘core-related’ strategy.
“Accurium sits naturally within our network and has a subscriber base of some 3,000 accounting firms and 11,000 SMSF professionals who require the efficiencies of online, automated actuarial certification and supplementary education and technical services,” Rowe said.
“The Accurium business is an online service provider, is highly automated, using proprietary actuarial calculators. It is technology-enabled with an ability to scale up as an ageing population transition their SMSF’s to retirement phase. Accurium estimates the current addressable market for SMSF Actuarial certificates is circa 140,000 funds.”
