Asian back-office service provider boosted by FOFA
Outsourced back-office services provider JC Consulting has expanded its offering and client list following the introduction of the Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) reforms.
JC Consulting managing director Jason Cutrupi said FOFA had strengthened the case for the business’ back-office service. The services provider is based out of Australia but has its staff operating from an office in Thailand, overseen by Australian-qualified financial planner Richella Daly.
Cutrupi said 20 practices, most of them independent, were now signed up to the back-office service, with most using it for paraplanning and statement of advice (SOA) preparation.
“About 85 per cent of the work is around SOAs, where we work through the technical details gathered by the planners in Australia while they provide and insert the specifics around the strategy in their own office,” Cutrupi said.
“However we have built our team and processes around servicing the bespoke needs of practices, which is something we have expanded into since our launch as many practices have systems or processes which are unique or designed to cater to their own business model.”
Cutrupi said the business was only focused on back-office services at present, as many people were reluctant to deal with client services provided from overseas due to negative experiences with other non-financial services providers.
“We do not think this would reflect well on the practices we work with, so our focus is on the onerous back-office tasks many planners find costly to do or struggle to find staff to do the work.”
He also rejected comments that being offshore opened planners up to security issues. He stated that both the office and its electronic communications attained Australian standards - and in many cases would be higher than the security undertaken by many Australian-based practices.
The back-office service was launched two years ago and was designed to service Cutrupi’s own planning business but was ramped up in the lead-up to FOFA, with Wealthtrac signing on to the service in January of this year.
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Jason Spits
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