The alternatives sector is unique in that it’s largely defined by what it’s not. Accordingly, how you fit alternatives within your existing asset class structure will depend on relativity, and how the investments interact with the other asset classes according to Atchison’s Kev Toohey.
The private markets juggernaut is one that has also thrown up a wealth of data that other players can use to sharpen up due diligence when making their own investment decisions – especially in the growing secondaries market.
Infocus releases ‘magic’ platform tool as it nears 30-year anniversary
The nation’s 15th biggest licensee network, Sunshine Coast based Infocus, has leant into its technology capabilities with the launch of a new tool that allows advisers to link client information from its customer relationship (CRM) system directly to its investment platform.
The launch of this ‘magic button’, as it’s being called, both saves back-office time and eliminates the risk of human error in the advice implementation process. Rather than transferring information manually between the CRM and a platform when new clients come on, for example, the tool acts as a conduit to transfer everything on file onto the receiving end.
It’s a deceptively complex piece of technology, and one that is unique principally because it was born out of one of Infocus’ unique points of difference as a licensee; both its CRM and investment platform are proprietary systems developed for the use of its aligned advisers.
Developing both its CRM, PlatformplusAMS, and its managed account-enabled investment platform, PlatformplusWRAP, has been a key element of the network’s value proposition to advisers, according to Darren Steinhardt, who founded the business with his wife Stephanie (both pictured) almost 30 years ago.
If you’re going to offer services that the incumbents already do well, he says, you need to do a pretty good job at it yourself. And if there are any flaws in your system, they need to be addressed.
“Once we soft launched the wrap platform a year ago and essentially completed the Platformplus ecosystem we had all the financial management, risk framework and compliance systems in place,” he tells The Inside Adviser. “But the bit we were missing was execution.”
When a new client signs up, Steinhardt says, the implementation process generally stalls at the point back-office staff need to manually transfer client information from the CRM to the investment platform. It also creates a compliance risk point.
“Every time you have a human involved in the process there’s a risk of error,” he says. “If I go over our business in the last five years, I think we’ve had maybe one instance where there was a minor breach around the advice being given. Apart from that they’ve all been administration errors, someone simply ticking the wrong box.”
The potential for human error in the onboarding process did have a silver lining, however, as it created an opportunity that not many other licensees had access to. With its own proprietary systems, Infocus could create its own tool to facilitate the data transfer between them.
“The magic button removes the need for someone to complete an application form because it takes all the data in the CRM and the advice in the recommendation and starts the whole implementation process,” he says. “Salesforce and Xplan… they don’t do this.”
What was once a two to three hour process, Steinhardt boasts, is now done in ten to 15 seconds.
Hawking the stack
With about 100 practices, 200 advisers and $10 billion in client funds under management under its purview, Infocus has just enough scale to pull off these kind of IT projects – with the help of platform technology providers like global partner FNZ.
Infocus itself has around 110 shareholders, yet Steinhardt and his wife are still the largest shareholder of the venture, which means making bold decisions about investing back into the business is easier than it would be at a fully listed entity.
And while Infocus still retains its regional roots, with a head office on the Sunshine Coast affording Steinhardt the ability to surf before work most days, its network now spreads across the country.
Steinhardt is keen on more growth, and says he’d like Infocus to become 25 per cent bigger. The ‘magic button’ technology not only enhances the licensee support proposition, which he hopes will bring more advisers onboard, but it also opens up the group’s technology suite as a standalone offering to external groups.
Steinhardt says hawking the tech stack is something that is on the table, but isn’t being fully leveraged just yet with only “about a dozen or so” external licensees on board.
“We’ve been very selective with the externals,” he says. “We want to make sure it’s the right fit, but if the deal works and there’s reasonable scale we’ll consider it.
