A partnership with SuperIQ underpins a broad strategy by ANZ to develop a comprehensive self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) service.
A second step involves working with groups such as the SMSF Professionals’ Association of Australia (SPAA) to train financial planners to establish SMSFs for clients.
The bank’s SMSF strategy involved ANZ selling its wholly-owned accounting, tax and compliance business, Super Concepts, to SuperIQ – which is 49 per cent owned by AMP. ANZ will then badge the SuperIQ service as its own.
Planner roll out
ANZ’s new service, launched in early December, will now be rolled out to ANZ’s financial planning groups – which include RI advice, Milennium3 and ANZ Financial Planning.
“We’re initially just going to target self-managed super funds,” said Craig Brackenrig, ANZ’s managing director of pensions and investments.
“Within ANZ, if you look at E*Trade and ANZ V2 [cash trust] and deposits, we’ve got a number of customers we already know are a very good target market who we are going to be targeting initially.
“With ANZ Financial Planning, ANZ Private Bank, RI advice, Milennium3 and FSP – our dealer network – we’ve got a very broad dealer footprint and we’re currently going through a process of accrediting a tiered structure. Certain advisers will be accredited to write SMSFs; those advisers will be able to set up an SMSF for their clients. They’ve got to be accredited within our respective dealer networks, and we’re working with entities such as SPAA to do that.”
Brackenrig said the traditional SMSF services that Super Concepts provided were “not necessarily a core capability of ANZ”.
“But we recognised that we could not be exiting the SMSF market without an alternative strategy, where we could actually be closer to the customer and closer to the part of the value chain where we have the existing products and services to deliver to the customer,” he said.
“The whole idea was to be closer to the customer through a digital portal – that’s what SuperIQ brings.
“It ended up being a natural transaction for them to acquire the accounting piece [through Super Concepts], and to provide the digital portal for us to provide customer solutions such as V2, deposits, E*Trade and OnePath insurance to the SMSF market.”
ANZ describes the service as a “digital self-managed super fund”. Brackenrig said it is the first fully-integrated SMSF solution, incorporating set-up, ongoing compliance and monitoring, and investments.
Brackenrig said that “from a consumer’s perspective, from an iPad, for example, or from their desktop, they can set up a self-managed superannuation fund, connect it to the services that they want, and have 24/7 reporting on that; have electronic compliance monitoring; email notification of contribution limits [and] asset allocation limits, if you’re approaching an asset allocation limit; and be able to rebalance asset allocation online”.
“It’s an integrated tool, from the set-up of the fund from day one, and the ongoing monitoring and compliance of the fund – and, indeed, transacting,” Brackenrig said.
Incredibly fragmented
He said the SMSF market is “incredibly fragmented, and – comparing it to say, retail superannuation – no one has been able to bring a solution to bear which satisfies most of the accounting and compliance needs and set-up needs of the customers”.
“That’s why it has been fragmented,” Brackenrig said.
“When ANZ sat back and looked at it from its perspective, if you look at the cornerstone investments of any SMSF, the majority of the assets at the moment in Australia are in cash, deposits and shares; they’ve generally got some insurance; they’ve generally got some managed funds; and the odd one has some investment lending.
“If you look at ANZ’s product suite, we’ve got all that – and that’s what we’ve hooked up. That’s the program of work that we’re embarking on. The integration piece predominantly around the cash, the shares, the insurance and managed funds is something that everyone has been looking for.”
Brackenrig said the process of setting up and running a fund has been automated and taken online to the greatest extent possible. Some aspects still require paper to be physically signed by trustees, but the service is set up to generate the necessary forms and documents automatically.
“It will generate most of the documentation you need, and where you need – for example, a signature… we will generate that and send it to you and the team will follow it up,” he said.
Brackenrig said pricing has yet to be finalised but will be “comparable to other offers in the marketplace”. The ultimate cost to a consumer will depend on the range of services used, and whether or not ANZ products form part of the investment solution.
“If it’s within ANZ it’s going to be slightly cheaper and far more efficient,” he said.
This article was originally published on the Professional Planner self-managed super fund app for iPad. Download the app.
