Managed account sector evolution to continues

Following on from The Inside Network’s MDA Feature – 2020 round-up article published earlier this week, we received an influx of communication around the many managed accounts not included on the list.

According to the Institute of Managed Account Professionals (IMAP), funds under management (FUM) for managed accounts in Australia stood at $79.9 billion at the end of June 2020, up from just $13 billion five years earlier. The message is clear: advisers are seeing managed account services as their preferred service model for a certain client segment. Despite the continued strong growth in managed discretionary accounts (MDAs), it remains difficult to find a central access point for timely, accurate and industry-wide data.

Despite the rapid growth, managed accounts represent a small percentage of the total managed fund and equities market. As a result, the big research houses largely do not yet cover the managed accounts space. Without meaningful data, it is hard to gauge which MDAs have performed well and which have performed poorly. Last week, the team analysed the December quarter MDA performance data supplied by one of the major wealth management platforms. Innately, the data is limited to the MDAs placed within that platform and so many are not listed. For that reason, we encourage boutique fund managers to email through performance data on a monthly basis, as we have decided to embark on an internal project to build the most in-depth reporting for this booming sector.

Following my previous article two new managers stood out as having been missed from the analysis.

Bellmont Securities

• CEO Peter Bell and his team have five MDAs that have done exceptionally well for the year. While quarterly data was not provided, for the year the Growth MDA posted a 9.7 per cent rise while the Balanced MDA rose 7.6 per cent. Both funds smashed the AMI Mixed Asset Balanced Index return, of 2.98 per cent.

Seneca Financial Solutions

• CEO Luke Laretive heads Seneca with a decade of experience in providing strategic investment analysis and advice in the broking world. The firm uses multi-asset portfolios for high-net-worth families, keeping their long-term objectives at the core of his strategy. The firm has five MDAs which have also performed exceptionally well for the quarter and the year. The Seneca Growth Model delivered a quarterly return of 7.0 per cent and a yearly return of 10.6 per cent, beating all other funds and the index. The Seneca Balanced Model returned 5.3 per cent for the quarter and 7.8 per cent for the year. The firm is platform-agnostic and uses Praemium, BT Panorama, North and Powerwrap.

Once again – if you have performance data for your Balanced MDA, please send it through to us.

Ishan Dan

Ishan is an experienced journalist covering The Inside Investor and The Insider Adviser publications.