Insignia Financial will reduce fees on its MLC Expand platform, benefitting 240,000 super, pension and investment clients.
Insignia migrated 94,000 client accounts holding $38.6 billion funds under administration from MLC Wrap and other associated platforms, a project that was completed a year ago.
Expand has two platform options – the low cost Expand Essential for clients with simpler needs and the “full-service wrap” Expand Extra.
Expand Essential will drop the account keeping fee from $90 to $78 per annum; the administration fee will remain at 10 basis points, but the fee cap will come into effect for balances of $800,000 instead of $1,000,000.
The account keeping fee for Extra will reduce from $180 to $150 per annum; the tiered administration fee will be reduced for balances above $100,000, with the most significant reductions being applied to client balances between $200,000 and $800,000.
Insignia estimated an Expand Extra client with an account balance of $250,000 would see a 25 per cent fee reduction, saving more than $330 per annum.
The MLC Expand platform also supports the IOOF Employer Super, IOOF Personal Super and IOOF Pension products, which will reduce the account keeping fee and administration fee for around 80,000 clients from 1 June 2025.
In total, around 65 per cent of all MLC Expand platform clients will benefit from the upcoming fee reductions.
“We’ve listened to advisers and reduced our fees in areas that matter and maintained one of the simplest and transparent fee structures in market,” MLC Expand chief executive Liz McCarthy said.
MLC previously lowered fees to the current levels in late 2022 as part of the platform simplification strategy commenced by Insignia.
Recep Peker, founder of platform researcher SuitabilityHub, said having a single wrap platform has streamlined business operations for Insignia, removing inefficiencies by running parallel offers.
“MLC Expand has made significant investments over recent years to improve the platform’s operational scalability – benefiting both advisers and internal teams,” Peker said.
“While some of these investments were made in preparation for the MLC Wrap migration in March 2023, operational efficiency has remained a strategic focus post-migration.”
But whether this is the start of a race to the bottom on fees, Peker said he expects platforms to compete by aligning fees to their target markets and the specific value their propositions deliver.
“Fees are just one lever platforms can use to stay competitive,” Peker said.
“In a mature market, successful platforms will continue to differentiate not just on price, but on service, features, and value-added capabilities.”
