Falling fee culture rolls on

Downward pressure on fees in the industry continues with MLC and ING the latest heavyweights to signal better deals for consumers by both announcing a raft of changes to some of their respective products today.

MLC has cut fee levels for 12 offerings within the non-superannuation component of its MasterKey platform by up to 0.25 per cent, while ING has slashed the management fees on two of its wholesale unit trusts.

The two ING funds affected are its Mortgage Trust No. 2 and Fixed Interest Securities Trust, which have had their ongoing fees reduced by 0.30 and 0.10 per cent respectively.

Meanwhile, MLC has also unveiled a series of enhancements to its MasterKey offering with the addition of 17 new single managers, a revamped margin lending offer, enhanced reporting facilities and a new focus to allow advisers to economically service young ‘thirty-somethings’ with high debt levels.

The changes, according to MLC’s recently appointed chief executive Steve Tucker, were partly driven by the “investment-centric” nature of platforms and a core focus of them competing through price.

“What we’ve been doing with MasterKey is thinking about what is the next evolution of platforms? Is it about getting bigger and better and cheaper at solving investment issues or has that area achieved what it needs to do to make it efficient for advisers to invest money?” Tucker said earlier today.

The group has therefore moved to integrate investment, insurance and debt into the one arena for advisers.

“This integrated solution will create efficiencies for advisers, giving them more time to spend face-to-face with their clients,” Tucker said.

The changes are part of MLC’s ongoing $220 million Amazon project, which was also responsible for launching the Adviser Central planner platform back in April.

According to MLC head of financial planning and third party distribution Matt Lawler, the rollout of Adviser Central has been a little slower than initially anticipated with the group now undergoing a stage by stage approach as opposed to the scheduled mass delivery to planner desk tops.

The latest changes to MasterKey are scheduled to go live in the first quarter of 2005, although the fee reductions became effective on November 8.