Several advisers have told Good Returns that the ASB-owned investment platform provider is now only interested in big businesses and would not take on new advisers unless they were bringing significant sums of FUM with them.

Norman Stacey, of Diversified Investment Strategies, said he was told $8 million under management and six clients was not enough for Aegis. He said Apteryx/Amadeus also seemed only to be interested in the bigger players.

Stacey said that could be an issue for advisers as the new DIMS rules kick in. “Loss of custodial services could be an impediment to independents, as regulators and especially DIMS, I believe, requires a custodian.”

But ASB’s executive general manager wealth and insurance Nick Stanhope said Aegis was not moving away from independent advisers.

He said the IFA market remained an important part of Aegis’ business.

“We are currently socialising the idea of moving all adviser groups that use Aegis to a single contractual model which will be more efficient for them and us. This single contractual model, colloquially known as the “institutional” model, will provide advisers with the same system functionality and service flexibility they currently have.”

He said that model was referred to as the “institutional” model because it had been historically adopted by institutions using Aegis.

That could have led to a misunderstanding, Stanhope said.

“The market may have misconstrued this as Aegis pulling away from the IFA market. Aegis continues to show strong growth in funds under administration across advisers with growth over 20% in the last year.”