Pinnacle’s UK affiliate, Pacific Asset Management (PAM), is looking to the Australian advisory market to expand its model portfolio business overseas.
Pinnacle acquired a 21 per cent stake in PAM in November 2024 and recently brought that to 100 per cent ownership in April 2026. Holding a greater stake allows Pinnacle to accelerate global growth with complementary distribution platforms to enhance geographic reach, affiliate origination and product innovation.
The firm’s founder and chief executive, Matt Lamb, has now joined the Pinnacle board as an executive director.
Speaking on a Pinnacle results webinar following its full-year results, Lamb said expanding into the Australian advisory market is a logical next step for the firm. PAM currently has a range of model portfolio solutions which blend active, passive and index strategies.
“We are working out how we can take interesting investment capabilities and distribute that in Australia, whether that’s our infrastructure or our model portfolio distribution.
“Clearly the retail market in Australia is very focused on outcomes in advice and that requires more and more financial advisers to outsource to SMA [separately managed account] providers. We believe that when the time is right, the technology infrastructure, the Pinnacle brand and PAM’s track record has as much appeal in Australia as it does in the UK.
“We’re super excited, our UK business is in the SMA market and model portfolios are accelerating so there’s a possibility we can achieve in Australia what we have already achieved in the UK when the time is right.”
The Australian advice market is sitting at the same stage as the UK market was a decade ago so Lamb was optimistic that the system would translate the geographic boundary.
“In the UK, there’s continued penetration growth of model portfolios and our business remains differentiated in how we approach that. We are continuing to accelerate and are embarking on joint ventures which will continue to grow.
“The Australian market is fascinating. It has similarities to where the UK was 5-10 years ago. Everything translates across from the technology build-out, the language, the regulatory perspective, it’s all extremely similar so that’s definitely the next stage.”
As part of this focus on joint ventures, PAM has entered into an agreement to enact its own acquisition of 100 per cent of Asset Value Investors (AVI), a UK-based specialist fund manager launched in 1985 and led by chief executive Joe Bauernfreund. AVI has £1.9 billion ($3.6 billion) in assets under management including an AVI Global Trust and AVI Japan Opportunity Trust.
For PAM, it said it has identified a “significant runway for organic growth” through distribution with significant capacity available in AVI’s existing strategies as well as opportunities for adjacent products.