Betashares promotes key sales execs

Betashares has strengthened its distribution team with two key promotions as it moves to accelerate growth in superannuation, retirement, and retail wealth management.

The promotions come just two days after Singapore's state-owned fund Temasek agreed to buy a minority stake in the exchange-traded fund provider for $300 million.

Further, Rainmaker data revealed BetaShares has the fastest ETF flows in the country, making it the second-largest ETF manager, sitting behind Vanguard but ahead of BlackRock and VanEck.

Adam O'Connor and Max Minack have been promoted to national head of wealth distribution and head of broking and wealth management, respectively.

In the newly created role, O'Connor will have increased responsibility for the day-to-day management of the adviser, broking, and wealth management channels. He joined eight years ago from Bell Potter Securities, where he advised on investment strategy, portfolio construction and asset selection for individual and superannuation investment portfolios.

For his part, Minack will lead the broking and wealth management distribution efforts. Like his colleague, Minack also arrived from Bell Potter, where he also served in an advisory role.

Betashares head of distribution and capital markets Peter Harper said the promotions will increase the scalability and depth of the national footprint of the growing fund manager's distribution team.

"Alongside our extremely capable team, both promotions will set us up for our next growth phase as we continue our efforts to educate our clients about the benefits of ETFs for growing and protecting their clients' wealth," he said.

"Adam, Max and the entire team have a deep understanding of the opportunities and challenges in front of our clients. These promotions are designed to leverage this expertise and give our team more flexibility by ensuring decision-making remains as close to our clients as possible.

"Overall, I'm very proud of the team we've built together, which has ultimately assisted us to achieve strong outcomes for our clients."

Commenting on the Rainmaker data, Harper added: "We're not resting on our laurels and continually looking for ways to improve how we assist our broad and highly valued client base."

Interestingly, Vanguard Australia's former head of pension and superannuation, Wes Hatch, has started a new role as Betashares as director of superannuation and retirement.

In this role, Hatch will help build long-term retirement solutions as part of Betashares' planned move into superannuation.

At Vanguard, Hatch established the fund's retirement income strategy.

Before his three years there, he was a senior product design manager at AustralianSuper.

He earlier oversaw product management at Northern Trust, pioneering its entry into superannuation servicing.