FNZC earns over $100m for UK wrap

First New Zealand Capital (FNZC) will receive a minimum of £35.5 million ($106 million) over a period of six years for providing an end-to-end wrap platform for the recently-listed UK financial services giant Standard Life.

Thursday, August 10th 2006, 5:28AM

by David Chaplin

FNZC’s fee was revealed in the Standard Life listing prospectus in July, and includes a £12 million implementation fee and a minimum fee of £23.5 million over the six-year initial term of the agreement.

According to Adrian Durham, FNZC wrap chief, the group is in talks with a number of other UK and “pan European” financial services firms to provide similar products to the Standard Life platform.

“Some are even larger than Standard Life,” Durham said. The FNZ/Standard Life wrap came to light almost two years ago and the deal between a UK insurance and investments behemoth and the Wellington-based minnow surprised many in the industry.

FNZC beat out US software giant DSTi when securing the Standard Life contract.

Before the Standard Life deal FNZ administered about $NZ3 billion but had already exceeded that amount after adding £1.9 billion on the UK platform after officially launching in May, according to Forrester Research.

Durham said 28 UK independent financial advisory (IFA) firms had implemented the Standard Life/FNZ wrap into their businesses by the end of July.

“We’re adding on one to two IFA firms a day,” he said.

Forrester predicted that by 2009 the Standard Life/FNZC platform would have £18.6 billion (NZ$56 billion) in funds under administration making it the third biggest wrap in the UK.

In New Zealand, FNZC provides wrap services to a number of institutions including Tower, ING and BNZ as well as financial planning groups such as AMP Financial Services, Professional Investment Services NZ and a raft of smaller firms.

Durham said the FNZC wrap division now employs 110 people compared to only 30 lasts year. The majority of the FNZ wrap staff are now based in Edinburgh, the home city of Standard Life, but a large number remain in Wellington.

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