Platform wars heat up

NZX's Wealth Technology platform has signed up a new investment group, just as MMC takes control of Aegis and Consilium rolls out a new version of the FNZ platform.

Wednesday, December 11th 2019, 7:38AM

NZX’s Wealth Technologies business (NZXWT), has formed a partnership with Saturn Advice to support its investment and wealth management services.

The advice group is moving from Aegis.

NZX Wealth Technologies chief executive Lisa Brock said the letter of intent signed with New Zealand-based Saturn Advice was the first step toward a services agreement under which NZXWT would provide custody and operational services using the full capability of the new platform launched in November 2018.

“This is a significant endorsement for us, to have Saturn Advice planning a move to our platform – with Craigs Investment Partners already onboard and Hobson Wealth Partners due to be migrated over the next year.

“Our customers are seeing real value in our service offering, alongside the NZXWT infrastructure that provides a flexible and seamless online experience for their clients,” she said.

John McConnell, managing director for Saturn Advice, said the move was driven by a need for technology to suit its superannuation business, which NZXWT could offer.

"The decision to move to NZXWT was primarily driven by the capabilities of NZXWT to deliver Saturn with innovative and leading-edge technology that will enable us to improve services to our clients and have the ability to develop new services in the future," he said.

"We are trying to grow the business. The decision certainly wasn't made with anything to do with what Aegis is doing with its process."

NZXWT currently has more than 20,000 portfolios being managed through its new wealth management platform.

The most recent shareholder metrics from NZX showed NZXWT had funds under administration of $2.255 billion, up 12.1% year-on-year.

Brock said “NZXWT’s offering is attractive to an industry ready for new solutions”. She said it was a scalable platform – offering flexibility to cater for different business models, including fully integrated New Zealand tax management and the only KiwiSaver wrap.

The wealth technology opportunity pipeline for the business was strong, she said, with customers looking for technology allowing agile development and strong integrated reporting functionality so that they could customise the look-and-feel for brand consistency.

NZXWT’s platform allows wealth managers to efficiently maintain and report on their customers’ investment portfolios – featuring a management reporting framework for users to self-service data queries and provides simple downloads for analysis. Pre- and post-trade compliance checks are customisable in an automatic notification framework with multiple channel options.

Meanwhile, the Consilium team has been demonstrating the new features of the enhanced Wrap 2.0 platform at presentations around New Zealand ahead of the April product launch.

“There’s been incredible interest and attendance at the events, and we’ve received excellent feedback from advisers,” managing director Scott Alman said.

“It’s all part of our vision and commitment for Consilium Wrap to be the most advanced platform in the market.

“Some key benefits for advisory businesses include Wrap 2.0’s interactive dashboarding, a toolbox to help increase the value of advice and make advisers’ lives easier such as stochastic modelling, investment research, and paperless on-boarding, plus the ability for client profiles to be created independently and linked to multiple accounts."

Consilium works with more than 100 firms using the platform and has managed technology transfers for more than 50 clients from other providers’ platforms in the past couple of years. The Consilium service now manages more than $4.2 billion in funds under administration.

“Our partner FNZ is the largest custodial platform provider outside of the US and working with them gives Consilium and the New Zealand adviser community direct access to the latest developments,” Alman said.

FNZ chief executive Adrian Durham said: “Importantly, once you are on our core technology platform it is continuously upgraded everywhere around the world so there is a continuous upgrade path funded by the £40-£50 million (which is NZ$80-90 million) which we spend every year on R&D.”

Some of the platform’s other benefits were that it was an API-enabled and highly configurable set of services, he said.

“It delivers a modern proposition which we think is a long way ahead of anything that is otherwise likely to be available in the New Zealand market,” Durham said.

Tags: Aegis Consilium FNZ NZX Saturn Wealth Technologies Wrap Platforms