AMP Capital, the funds management arm of AMP, is building a new business unit to service the lucrative self-managed superannuation fund market. It has appointed former head of National Australia Bank online trading, Tim Keegan, to the newly created position of head of SMSF.
Keegan oversaw the development of NAB’s online trading business nabtrade, which was launched in October 2012.
He joins AMP Capital at the end of October and will work closely with the group’s retail team and the AMP SMSF division to develop a suite of products and services for SMSF trustees which will be available in 2014.
“These will provide SMSF investors with access to the full suite of AMP Capital investment capability including assets that are typically difficult for this group to hold in their portfolios,” AMP said in a statement.
In the late 1990s, AMP established AMP Direct to sell insurance, mortgages and superannuation products to consumers over the phone and online. It also had an online share trading platform and capital-guaranteed product area. Both were closed down by AMP chief executive Craig Dunn in 2002.
AMP declined to comment on whether it planned to resurrect its investment trading platform strategy to compete with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s CommSec, ANZ’s ETrade and nabtrade.
Earlier this month, AMP’s incoming chief executive Craig Meller announced his new leadership team, which includes former Westpac Bank executive Rob Caprioli as group executive advice and banking.
Nabtrade, which was built on a technology platform that is integrated with the bank, has a relatively small market share compared to the other big banks. Of the institutions, CBA is arguably the dominant player in the SMSF space with 1.5 million Australians, many of whom are SMSF trustees, trading with CommSec, and many trustees seeking advice from the group’s accounting dealer group Count.
