High hopes for Macquarie Wrap
Macquarie Portfolio Services reckons it can sign up 40 financial planning dealer groups to its new wrap service by the end of next year.
Macquarie Portfolio Services reckons it can sign up 40 financial planning dealer groups to its new wrap service by the end of next year.
Twelve dealer groups have already signed up with Macquarie prior to its launch this week including Malcolm Whittle and Ed Skok’s Whittle & Skok; Tony Gil-lette’s RetireWell group; and Bruce Christie’s Provision business. Macquarie re-mains tight-lipped on the other dealer groups but says they include some of the biggest names in the financial planning industry. Macquarie also says a long line of adviser groups are taking a good look at the system.
The dealer groups already signed have taken on the wrap account under four dif-ferent types of arrangement. Dealer groups can either buy the off-the-shelf Mac-quarie product; co-brand the service with Macquarie; badge the service to the dealer group; or outsource the back office technology for the dealer group’s own wrap service.
Macquarie Portfolio Services associate director Phil Butterworth says this flexibil-ity is one of the primary attractions of the service for advisers.
“We didn’t want to offer advisers a vanilla offering but something that allows them to alter the way they deal with us in years to come,” he says.
Macquarie is also aware of some of the regulatory issues that may arise of an on-going review by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC). Under an ASIC proposal contained in a discussion paper from earlier this year, dealer groups that badge wrap accounts may have to conform to single responsible entity (SRE) regulations. Some industry pundits are concerned that many adviser groups who have badged wrap accounts may struggle to conform to capital ade-quacy requirements. ASIC will release another paper on the issue later next month.
Macquarie Portfolio Services director Neil Roderick says the flexibility of Mac-quarie’s offering should allow adviser groups to conform to any pending ASIC regulations.
The appearance of Macquarie on the wrap account landscape also turns up the heat on some of the industry’s established players such as BT Portfolio Services. A number of master trusts and wrap accounts have recently upped the ante in the market by offering better pricing deals or more features.
Macquarie already has plans to expand its service, by releasing phase one of its su-perannuation service next month.
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