Financial advisers are generally happy with their platform providers but wish costs were lower so they could pass these savings on to their clients.
CoreData this week named Netwealth Investment Wrap its platform of the year ahead of AXA North with Colonial’s FirstChoice platform garnering bronze.
Macquarie Wrap and BT Wrap rounded out the top five.
An online survey of 571 financial advisers, carried out in June, found Netwealth users were more satisfied on average than users of qualifying competitor platforms across a range of criteria including functionality, product features, fees, service, support and reporting.
The wrap recorded the highest average satisfaction among main and secondary users of the platform when compared to nine industry peers – AXA North, Colonial FirstChoice, Macquarie Wrap, BT Wrap, Asgard e-Wrap, Navigator, AMP Flexible Super, OnePath OneAnswer and MasterKey.
Kristen Turnbull, head of advice, wealth and super at CoreData, said while the majority of advisers are satisfied with the overall platform service levels of their main platform, cost is the key area where they are seeking improvement.
“The number one thing advisers would like their platform to improve in 2012 is lower cost to the investor,” she said.
“In the current environment, advisers are under pressure from clients to demonstrate the utility of their offer, and this means a strong focus on how much the services cost and what they provide.
“This cost pressure is being passed up the chain from client to adviser to the platform providers. Administration accuracy and efficiency ranks second while other factors pale in comparison.”
Top drivers
The research found the top drivers of adviser satisfaction in 2012 are service-level attributes: accuracy of opening accounts, speed of switching between investments and speed of opening accounts.
Connectivity efficiency between desktop and platform and platform SOA function were the other top drivers.
Looking forward, the research found the level of business written with main and secondary platforms is expected to remain largely stable.
Three in five advisers (58.8 per cent) expect the level of business written with their main platform to remain the same in the next three to six months, while half of advisers (51.5 per cent) expect no change in the level of business being written with their secondary platform.
The remainder of advisers are somewhat polarized with a quarter (26 per cent) of advisers expecting to increase the level of business written via their main platform in the next three to six months, while 18.1 per cent are expecting to decrease the level of business written with their main platform over the same time horizon.
