 |  | Peter Scott
EGM, Wealth Management | | About Wealth Management
Wealth Management partners with financial advisers to provide quality financial planning services and a range of wealth creation, wealth protection, banking, superannuation and retirement solutions to build and protect customers' wealth throughout their lives. We also provide corporate and institutional customers with outsourced investment, superannuation and employee benefit solutions. Our Group's vision is to be a leading, international financial services company which is trusted by you and renowned for getting it right. Wealth Management will achieve this by: leveraging our core capabilities into selected international markets, leading the evolution towards holistic advice in Australia and delivering an integrated financial services experience for our customers. Wealth Management demonstrated that its business model is strong and sustainable. This year the business maintained its market position and continued to deliver and refine its strategy to ensure a diversified and resilient earnings base. Wealth Management achieved a strong net profit* of $174 million which was 24.3% higher than the previous year. *Net profit is before the after-tax impact of significant items and after outside equity interest This result was positively impacted by the performance of our insurance business and the turnaround in investment markets in the second half of the year. We held the largest share of the total Australian retail life insurance market as at June 30, 2003, with a 16.5% share of annual new business sales and a 14.7% share of premiums in force. (DEXX&R Life Analysis, June 2003) At the same time, we ranked as the number one provider of retail investment platforms (master funds and wraps) with a 19.2% market share (Assirt, June 30, 2003). Net profit by business line
 During the year, we continued to evolve our strategic vision and invest for future growth. The full acquisition of superannuation provider Plum Financial Services Limited in June accelerated enhancements to member education and strengthened our strategic position in the corporate superannuation market. In the United Kingdom, we established a strategic alliance with the insurer, Legal & General. This alliance will enable us to provide customers with a flexible and competitive suite of wealth protection products. Leading the evolution towards holistic advice
In Australia, the developments in our business reflect our intention to lead the evolution towards holistic advice and partner with advisers to assist them in the delivery of quality financial solutions for their customers. We are committed to raising the professional standards of our advice businesses and are working with our advisers to assist them to achieve an Advanced Diploma of Financial Services (Financial Planning), or equivalent qualification, by December 2004. This is above the minimum educational standard required by the industry in Australia. We have a quality advice business model and in 2003 focused on enhancing our National Australian Financial Planning business. The quality advice model recognises that today's customers want strategic financial advice, based on a detailed understanding of their total lifestyle goals, rather than product-focused solutions. We have also enhanced our investment offerings to improve functionality for advisers and offer greater flexibility and transparency for customers. On our MLC MasterKey investment platform, we expanded customer investment choice with the addition of new funds and introduced a new fee structure to ensure greater transparency. We also enhanced our web-based reporting capabilities to provide a single view of the customer's investment and insurance holdings.  | | From left to right: Financial Planner, Con Gianna, and Banker, Rebecca Licciardi (both of Private Bank), consider investment options for clients Bruce and Valerie Kean. | | | Delivering an integrated financial services experience
Working closely with other areas of the Group, we aim to deliver an integrated financial services experience and make it easy for customers to access a wide range of services. This year, there were a number of specific initiatives to advance the customer experience, which included: - Advising customers to use debt more effectively as part of plans to achieve their lifestyle goals. Our planners have leveraged the National's lending capabilities introducing more than $1 billion in lending business † an increase of 12% on last year;
- Increasing access to specialists who provide advice and solutions to the National's business customers on key business risk insurance, employee superannuation and specialists employee remuneration programs, such as salary packaging; and
- Delivering complex and unique financial planning advice and solutions to customers through the integration of Private Bank into the Wealth Management business.
Leveraging our core capabilities
During 2003, we continued to leverage our core capabilities by selectively exporting components of our model to targeted international markets. In the United Kingdom, we launched a new adviser service offering to expand further into the growing external advice market. The offering, branded Pivotal, will provide external financial advisers with the MLC multi-manager investment process and will include a range of consultancy and business services. Our differentiated offer and bank customer base provides us with a strong foundation in a competitive market. In Hong Kong, our customers now have greater investment choice following enhancements to our offer and improvements in our multi-distribution capability. We continued to increase our focus on the Greater China region, with a representative office in Beijing due to open in December 2003. For our New Zealand customers, we have piloted an innovative and simplified life insurance sales process. This joint initiative with Bank of New Zealand has delivered outstanding pilot results, recording higher levels of sales and customer satisfaction.  | | Community Day: Employees at MLC Indonesia help to build a greener environment at a school in West Jakarta. | Our people and the community
The importance of relationships and delivering lasting benefits to the community was demonstrated by our People and Community Trust, once again sponsoring our annual Community Day. More than 2,000 people in Australia and the United Kingdom have spent in excess of 10,000 hours rolling up their sleeves for the community, taking part in over 200 projects for a diverse range of community groups. In 2003, we became a member of the National's Community Consultation Forum designed to enhance further our dialogue with community organisations.  | | Under construction, National @ Docklands in Melbourne will house 3,500 employees, including 1,000 from Wealth Management. | | | Next year, more than 1,000 Wealth Management people will relocate to the National's new flagship building in Melbourne's Docklands. Building upon the success of Campus MLC in Sydney, National @ Docklands will set a new standard in workplace design and further strengthen our relationships with our people, our customers and the community. Importantly, it makes possible the co-location of Wealth Management with Financial Services Australia † a key step in realising the synergies inherent in the acquisition of MLC. | 
