BT takes wrap to independents

BT Financial Group will offer its wrap service directly to advisers for the first time under the banner of the BT Wrap.

Despite having a large presence in the market through the BT Portfolio Services' badged wrap, BT Private Label wrap, it is the first time BT has offered the group's wrap account directly to independent financial advisers.

It effectively transforms BT from being a wrap account wholesaler to a retailer.

The BT Private Label wrap, one of the fastest growing portfolio administration services on the market, is now offered through 1,600 advisers in 24 dealer groups with more than $4 billion under administration. Alongside Godfrey Pembroke's OneSource wrap, BT pioneered wraps in Australia when Lonsdale badged its service in 1997.

BT head of retail Rob Coombe says the development of the BT Wrap has been in the pipeline for 18 months and has been developed along the lines of the badged wrap.

He says the product is more suited to smaller, independent financial advisers and could be used in the provision of services to those clients managing their own superannuation funds, as the compliance, administration and trustee issues remain with BT.

The BT Wrap also has a reduced managed funds list, numbering 140, down from 300 in the private label service, and a differing fee structure. Adviser fees will be based on a tiered structure dependent of funds invested through the platform, with the range set between 0.975 and 0.1 per cent.

Head of portfolio services Bill Wawn says the driver for the new product was demands from independent advisers and boutique dealer groups.

"The way advisers have embraced the private label wrap indicates what this new wrap is worth to advisers and is an opportunity for BT to listen to what the independent adviser wants in a wrap offering," Wawn says.

Coombe says BT is expecting some growth off the back of the existing wrap service with between $100 to $200 million of inflows by the end of the year.

Coombe says about 100 independent planners will take up the service before the end of the year, adding more than $100 million to funds under administration.

The launch of the new wrap comes only two days after Macquarie announced it was also rolling out a super and pensions wrap service designed at targeting the do-it-yourself superannuation market.