Colonial First State executive chairman Rob Coombe says the wealth manager is on the lookout for acquisitions and would even consider buying a not-for-profit super fund as it starts a new chapter as a standalone-business backed by private equity.

US private equity giant KKR formally entered Australia’s superannuation sector on Wednesday finalising its deal to buy 55 per cent of Colonial, with the Commonwealth Bank retaining the remaining 45 per cent.

Amid a wave of consolidation in wealth management as banks retreat from the sector, Mr Coombe said Colonial would be open to acquiring super funds or platform businesses.

In recent years, there has also been a surge in super fund mergers, which can improve members’ returns by lowering costs per member, and Mr Coombe signalled Colonial was keen to be part of that industry trend.

“We’ve got shareholders who are willing to be active participants in that, so we’ll be looking where it makes sense, to be an acquirer of assets, a participant in consolidation,” he told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

As Colonial looks to gaineconomies of scale, Mr Coombe said it could consider taking over a retail fund, or even a not-for-profit fund, suggesting some mergers among not-for-profit funds were leaving “inherent value on the table”.

“There’s a lot of mergers that have been going on for no value in the not-for-profits, and we might be prepared to actually pay for some of those, as well, so we’d casting our eye over that,” he said.

Mr Coombe said he was not aware of any Australian for-profit funds merging with not-for-profit funds yet, and declined to go into detail about how such mergers would work, but said they were “definitely doable”. He would not comment on specific potential targets, including whether his firm would consider bidding for Westpac’s Panorama wealth platform.