Financial planning dealer group Platinum Group has rebranded after just a year in business.

The Perth-headquartered business is now called Sentry Group. The company’s founder, Murray Hills, said there were too many other Platinums around, creating confusion. Hills first used the name Platinum Group back in the early 1990s, when he set up a different dealer group. That group was bought out seven years ago, and the name was changed. When Hills set up his new dealer group last year he decided to use Platinum again, not realising in the interim a host of other derivations of the name had cropped up in the industry. “There were about six other licencees with the name Platninum and about 12 corporate representatives,” he said. Settling on a new name was a time-consuming process, as he had to rule out names already incorporated and listed on the ASIC website, and then find a corresponding domain name for the web and email addresses, and finally make sure he was able to trademark it. He went through 200 names before settling on Sentry Group, discarding 197 and letting the group’s advisers vote on the final three. It has been a costly exercise, with new business cards, letter heads and office frontages having to be supplied to his representatives. The group is headquartered in Perth, but has 80 representatives around the country, with a particularly strong presence in Victoria and Queensland.