FPS continues to roll its own IT solutions

Whilemany in the financial planning industry are keen to buy technology systems and forgo the agony of building their own system from scratch, Fiducian Portfolio Services (FPS) is still flying its in-house administration software flag proudly.

In December 2001, FPS severed its ties with AM Corporation and rolled out its own internally developed administration system.

FPS managing director Indy Singh says the group broke away from an external administration system because it believed that it could not properly expand within the industry without transferring its administration to an in-house model.

Singh says it is difficult to be tied to a system that is not your own, as you are constantly reliant and dependent on the external manager. He says it is also about reliability, and if things do not work out the way it was originally planned, then there is no level of control to change or alter the process.

“We didn’t want to just build a business to sell it off. We wanted to build a business that had a whole range of services and provide them to the financial planning community, in both Australia and overseas,” Singh says.

Singh feels many in the industry are shying away from launching their own in-house systems because they are not getting their design right. He says many of the systems are not user friendly, and people do not think enough about the management or maintenance of their system.