Has the SMSF tide peaked – or just paused?
Understanding SMSFs is not easy and it can be difficult to separate facts from opinion and outright hyperbole. It’s an extremely fragmented segment, so it’s hard to get a grip on how it looks as a whole, and how it is changing. The facts are relatively thin on the ground, mostly relying on ATO data […]
Read more...Recovering the lost art of selling
Last week we looked at how sections of the wealth management industry have gradually lost touch with their end customers. This is actually true of both retail and institutional markets. Many retail asset managers are now largely intermediated by researchers, platforms and large dealer groups; and in institutional by asset consultants. Some players have responded […]
Read more...Retail and the lost art of selling (part 1)
For a prospective customer, there’s nothing like seeing a product firsthand. Chatting recently with an ex- Head of Retail, he recounted a 1990s initiative to charter a light plane to fly half a dozen financial planners to Western Australia to visit a remote mine owned by a resources company their funds had invested in. If […]
Read more...Getting fund disclosure right
Disclosure was a 1994 potboiler of a film featuring Demi Moore as a power crazed executive sexually harassing Michael Douglas, playing one of her reports. Yup, seriously, that was the plot. Fund disclosure has become a hot topic already in 2012, and it has also taken on a rather hysterical tone, inclusive of absurd headlines […]
Read more...Platforms in 2012
We’re opening the year with some thoughts about platforms in 2012, given that our last Trialogue looking at Member Direct, AustralianSuper’s new direct-to-consumer super wrap, created enormous interest. As we all know, the retail platform business model is under pressure from: • A large and growing self-directed investor segment which is using SMSFs as its […]
Read more...AustralianSuper’s big HNW move
It has been a big finish to 2011 for Australia’s largest industry fund, and we’re not talking about the merger with AGEST, which will take the fund to a massive $50bn in assets. As significant a milestone as this is, for us the big story is the launch of Member Direct, AustralianSuper’s latest response to […]
Read more...Basel III, TD’s, and reincarnation as an SMSF
In 1993, one of President Clinton’s advisers famously said that he wanted to be reincarnated as the bond market, because then “you can intimidate everybody”. As for me, I want to come back as a self-managed super fund (SMSF). You can do pretty much whatever you like, your parents relax the rules when you throw […]
Read more...FoFA and the fault lines shaping advice
Tria was recently asked to participate in a roundtable discussion with a leading group of industry thinkers to discuss the “real future of financial advice”. Along with Tria’s Mark Watmore were representatives from aligned advice groups, independent advice groups, the FPA, and technology providers. As big an impact as FoFA is having, particularly on independent […]
Read more...Governing a $200 billion super fund
Fund governance was a recurring theme of the recent ASFA conference. It’s something we are going to hear a lot more of. Danielle Press, the new CEO of EquipSuper, offered a fairly blunt contrast of the super industry’s expectations of governance from its investments and fund managers; and the (lesser, in her view) governance standards […]
Read more...Why are platform prices falling?
MLC’s announcement of reduced 2012 pricing structure for Masterkey Fundamentals is a reminder of two strong trends in retail wealth: Falling prices for platforms. Intense competition for platform business before FOFA commences. At the Tria Strategy Breakfasts in October we described how the role of platforms as a tollgate in the retail industry’s prevailing business […]
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