Australian institutional platform providers should see themselves as boutiques, as global players start heavily eyeing the Australian market, SFG Australia head of platforms, Toby Potter believes.
Speaking about the relevance of boutique platforms at the 2014 Money Management Platforms and Wraps Conference, Potter said international institutions were looking to enter the domestic market, and had significantly more funds behind them than the biggest Australian providers.
“UBS is the largest asset gatherer in Asia — over $250 billon, or something like that size — or three times the size of the largest platform in Australia,” he said.
“UBS is the provider of the member direct service to Australian Super, Telstra Super, HostPlus and presumably a few others.
“State Street want to get into this market [as well]… they measure their assets in trillions of dollars… so in a sense, our own mainstream platforms should be seeing themselves as boutiques in a global sense, because those global providers are coming to Australia.
“To the extent that distribution is key each of them is walking around the house looking for a way in, but I’m sure they have the assets, resources, the patience and contacts to find a way in… it’s another thing we should be conscious of — people with global scale bringing global capacity to this market.”
However, netwealth managing director, Michael Heine, said that he was not concerned about the potential impact of the arrival of large international platforms.
“I have lots of fear about lots of technology that’s coming, lots of fear of potential competitors, whether it’s Coles or anyone else,” he said.
“[But] I don’t have any fear about the UBS platform.”
