Decimal half-year results show market traction

In releasing its half yearly results on Friday, 27 February, Decimal demonstrated the traction the digital disrupter is gaining, highlighting significant achievements:

– Successfully launched initial product offering to key segments within the Australian financial services sector in mid to late 2014

– Strategic early wins across segments including QSuper, WealthSure and Clear, and growth in existing clients including Mercer

– Building on a deployment pipeline representing a significant opportunity to grow user numbers, Decimal is in active discussion with groups that represent 3,500 advisers and more than 3 million customers in Australia

– Opportunity driven expansion into the US underway with Decimal well positioned for success in a US$78.6 trillion consumer net wealth addressable market

– Established high quality leadership team

Company Summary

Since listing in April 2014, Decimal management have focussed on the following key areas to position the company for success:

– Strategic investment in people and operational capabilities for market launch and ramp up;

– Building a solid sales pipeline in the Australian market;

– Continual release of innovative product; and

– Leverage the global scalability of the technology.

With the company demonstrating traction within the core financial advice segments – licensees, independent financial advisers (IFA) and enterprise markets – the objective for the 2015 year is to build upon these early wins and capitalise on momentum in both the Australian and US markets.

The company is strongly supported by scalable development and administration systems, which sees it well positioned to build customer and revenue bases.

Under the leadership of former Macquarie Bank senior executive, Carolyn Colley as CEO – Australia and NZ, the company has a high calibre team in place with the deep industry knowledge and experience required to build

the business in Australia. Prior to joining Decimal, Carolyn held senior executive positions with Macquarie Bank

(5 years), most recently as Executive Director Head of Personal Banking (Direct Channel), St George (6 years) and BT Financial Group (10 years).

Decimal established its presence in the US in early 2015 in response to emerging opportunities. Led by founder Jan Kolbusz, US interest in the Decimal capability has been substantial and more resources will be applied to leverage opportunities during 2015.

Customer Market Overview

Decimal is observing an acceleration of interest in both the Australian and US Fintech markets driven by factors including:

– Financial institution and advice industry response to consumer access to new financial technology offerings and demand for seamless, digital driven channels in their daily life. Decimal represents a unique “omni-channel” capability (real-time integration of on-line, telephone and face-to-face advice) and consumer experience to enable companies and advisors to navigate this quickly evolving landscape.

– Major industry superannuation funds, banks, financial advisory licensees and independent financial advisers struggle to ensure compliance requirements are consistently met. Media coverage of cases of fraud and unconscionable conduct have heightened concern while causing significant brand damage to the organisations involved, as well as damaging consumer confidence in advice more broadly. Decimal brings world first workflow, scale and visibility to the compliance process enabling proactive monitoring and greater control.

– Non-financial and “disruptor” brands entering financial product distribution, demonstrating the lowering of barriers to entry and evidence of disruption.

Australian Customer Take Up

In addition to existing clients, validation of the Decimal product is evidenced by recent successes that represent a significant opportunity with progressive deployment with a view to becoming the core advice platform for leading organisations:

– Selected by QSuper, Australia’s third largest superannuation fund to provide scaled financial advice with real-time process and compliance management to its members. QSuper has over 530,000 members investing $51 billion.

– Appointed preferred technology partner by WealthSure, a non-aligned dealer group with over 180 advisers, as its core advice platform and collaboration software.

– Selected by Clear Planning Solutions as technology partner for its outsourced paraplanning and support solutions. Clear Planning Solutions will also provide data migration services for those Decimal customers requiring support in transitioning from legacy software, a key step towards the establishment of a partner ecosystem.

– Expansion of the Mercer capability to enable real time advice systems to the Mercer Super Trust and other industry and employer sponsored superannuation funds.  The Mercer Super Trust alone has approximately 225,000 members and 250 participating employers with approximately $17.5bn in funds under management.

Product Highlights

Decimal’s roll out highlights the mature, highly scalable and reliable nature of the technology

– Time to deployment for QSuper on-line advice has been only approximately 3 months evidencing Decimal’s technology maturity and configurability.

– Decimal releases new and enhanced products, functionality and regulatory updates to all users in 6 weekly cycles. Throughout 2015 and beyond enhanced scope and functionality will see access to an even broader addressable market.

– The ability to start using the system immediately, without needing to install new hardware or software, and to start using the full end-to-end functionality of the Decimal platform to provide advice is a key differentiator.

– Completion of prototype version of consumer interface for US market leveraging the Decimal patent that has been driving a strong response in that market.

– Decimal continues to treat the security of its customer’s data as one its main priorities. IT security is aligned to ISO27001, the international industry standard for information security management.

– Scheduled uptime was 99.999% for the past 6 months. Decimal uses the world’s largest hosting service, Amazon Web Services (AWS), which enables us to scale our technical resources to meet demand in real-time.