As part of its ongoing development of its bureau service,AM Corporationhas stated that it will not be levying charges on the services despite originally planning to do so.
The service, which was rolled out in March was slated to adopt flat monthly fees for usage based on whether users were clients of AM’s LifeTrack service. Clients were to be charged $8.00 per month for the full suite of services and non-clients would pay $100 per month.
However AM Corporation information services national manager Paul Medcraft says after the initial roll out period, the decision was made to extend the fee free status of the service to all clients on the condition they were a client of the group. The same applies to financial planners who use AM Corporation products.
“The biggest single change we have made to the bureau is that it is free to use, and this is regardless of funds invested,” Medcraft says.
He denies the dropping of the proposed fees has to do with market conditions but rather is the logical way to go when offering a service such as this.
“In the US market services such as this are free and there are no questions asked, However if we charge for using it we then have a product but what we want to offer is a service,” Medcraft says.
“This has cost us money to build and we may not always recoup those costs but we are aiming at providing a service to clients and that is also part of developing the industry.”
“At the same time, this ratchets down the minimum accepted standard that is on offer to investors.”
The service has gone through a number of incremental upgrades since being unveiled with the most recent in June the addition of online superannuation forms which allows superannuation contributions and adimistration to be conducted electronically.
Medcraft says so far 500 employer funds are using the online service to manage supernnuation funds and employee details.
He says the next batch of changes will supply calculators and risk profiling tools to users of the service.
