The investment utility that’s helping solve the retirement challenge

Produced in partnership with BT.

As the expression goes, it takes 20 years to become an overnight success story. That phrase underscores that behind every seeming meteoric rise is decades of hard work, failure and persistence.

Amazon, Phil Collins and managed accounts fit that category.

This year, the managed accounts sector passed $300 billion in funds under management, marking a 10x increase in a decade. The latest research from Investment Trends shows that more than 60 per cent of Australian advisers now use managed accounts, compared to 17 per cent in 2013.

The bulk of that adoption has come in recent years. It has taken a long time for advisers to fully embed managed accounts, but that trend is accelerating, aided by education, product development and innovation.

Investors and advisers aren’t the only ones keeping a close eye on the growth and development of managed accounts. The rise of managed accounts has attracted ASIC’s attention too. The regulator is closely watching the sector to ensure it is delivering improved consumer outcomes while maintaining high risk management and governance standards.

“When regulators see shifts like this in market composition and dynamics, we are naturally interested,” ASIC Commissioner Alan Kirkland said in a speech at the Institute of Managed Account Professionals (IMAP) conference last year.

“We are interested in what’s driving these changes, what the impacts are, how different incentives might influence these changes, and most importantly, what they mean for consumers,” he said.

An evolving landscape

The latest stage in the evolution of managed accounts is their utility as a solution for retirees and pre-retirees to support retirement-income strategies and manage resilient portfolios that can help manage exposure to changing market conditions.

According to Tim Furlan, head of managed accounts at BT, the expansion of managed accounts from their original use as a flexible, transparent and tax effective structure to invest directly in Australian equities to their broader purpose today as an efficient way to manage multi-asset portfolios, highlights the structure’s benefits for investors and advisers.

“In addition to greater flexibility and transparency, and the ability to manage tax outcomes more effectively in line with individual circumstances, investors can access professional management at both a sector-specific and multi-asset level, while advisers can manage portfolios and implement ideas in an efficient, scalable way,” he tells Professional Planner.

For Furlan, who joined BT in August, leading the group’s $43.8 billion managed accounts business presented a unique opportunity to help shape BT’s separately managed accounts (SMAs) and managed discretionary accounts (MDAs) offer.

Over the past year, the group has added 89 managed portfolios across 11 investment managers, including three dedicated private markets solutions. BT’s Panorama was the first platform to offer a dedicated private markets SMA.

Looking ahead, the focus is on expanding the range of specialist capabilities, including retirement and income-focused options.

“The next evolution will be more specialist, niche multi-asset portfolios to help advisers meet the specific needs of clients,” Furlan says.

“Retirement is a key focus, given a large number of our existing clients are already in or approaching retirement. We’re seeing a growing number of specialist accounts for retirees because managed accounts can support greater customisation and personalisation to help investors meet specific goals and objectives.”

The retirement challenge

Retirement is one of the most complex challenges for the superannuation and wealth management industry to solve because retirement is different for everyone.

When and how an individual leaves the workforce, their lifestyle and retirement income requirements, how long they spend in retirement, and their goals and priorities, are all personal – so retirement advice and strategies need to be personal.

This differs significantly to accumulation, where the goal is to grow wealth as much as possible. Even for pre-retirees, the goal is still to maximise wealth, although there is a sharper focus on risk management.

Managed accounts have a role to play in implementing personal advice and contribute to addressing retirement needs, according to Furlan.

“Retirement is nuanced and multi-faceted,” he says.

“Retirees have fixed and variable expenses, regular and lumpy, one-off costs. As they get older, they’re thinking about health care, aged care and estate planning. Retirees have different objectives and priorities that interact, and also risks that need to be managed including longevity, sequencing risk  from short term market volatility and the risk of not earning enough on your investments.”

“With managed accounts, advisers can balance an individual’s need for income, growth and protection. Retirees still need to stay invested to some degree to ensure their money lasts through retirement, and advisers can use solutions like managed accounts to build specialised portfolios that help solve each clients’ unique problems.”

As people move through the different stages of retirement and their needs change, they need the flexibility to adjust their strategy and move their wealth around, which is why bucketing is a popular investment strategy. By having multiple buckets that serve different purposes and hold different – but potentially overlapping – investments, retirees can fund everyday expenses, cover any large, one-off costs that arise and maintain some exposure to growth assets to help meet their investment objectives and fight inflation. This approach helps minimise the risk of having to sell off investments to meet unexpected costs and may reduce the likelihood of needing to sell growth assets at an unfavourable time.  

“There are layers to retirement, so having a structure that allows investors to swiftly adjust their strategy as their circumstances change, and move assets between accounts efficiently, becomes really important,” Furlan says.

“Advisers can create a portfolio of managed accounts specifically for retirees that can move from cash all the way to high growth. Where those managed accounts hold some common assets, it can avoid the need to sell down and repurchase assets and save transaction costs and risks when a change is needed.”

More growth to come

Furlan believes that the sector will continue to grow strongly, underpinned by demand for efficient solutions that enable advisers to deliver excellent service and advice at scale.

“The confluence of structural factors and advantages of managed accounts have driven growth over the past five years and will continue to drive growth,” Furlan says.

“As managed accounts continue to evolve, it’s important the industry maintains a strong focus on governance, oversight and client outcomes. Scale and efficiency are important benefits, but they need to be supported by robust controls and clear accountability.”

Disclaimer: Information current as at September 2026. This communication has been prepared for use by financial advice professionals only. It must not be made available to any client and any information in it must not be communicated to any client. This information does not take into account your clients’ personal objectives, financial situation or needs and so you and your clients should consider its appropriateness, having regard to these factors before acting on it.