MLC boots reporting with InvestmentLink deal

MLCand electronic platform provider InvestmentLink have signed a deal enabling the former to widen its platform’s reporting capabilities to include products from vendors signed with InvestmentLink.

The arrangement will result in Visiplan, the planning software recently adopted by MLC, receiving electronic feeds from both the group’s platforms, Flexiplan and Masterkey, and InvestmentLink’s e-portfolio, to enable advisers within the MLC group to include a wider range of products in their consolidated reports to clients.

MLC general manager of adviser distribution Matt Lawler says the deal will fill a gap that existed for MLC advisers, who will now have access through Visiplan to up to 75 per cent of products within the market.

Reporting on products previously excluded, advisers had to contact fund managers and enter product details into the planning software manually.

“If you had six investments in one portfolio not reported by the platforms then this could become very labour intensive,” Lawler says.

The deal will see a productivity gain for advisers, according to Lawler, as well as expanded reporting at no additional cost to clients.

The new service will be available to advisers as part of a strategic advice platform rollout in the first quarter of 2004.

For InvestmentLink, the deal will see up to 1,500 new advisers using its service, with annual revenues for the group likely to approach $500,000 per annum when fully taken up.

The deal by MLC is part of the group’s Amazon initiative, which committed an investment of $200 million over four years to support advisers in the group.

Lawler says this has involved a design phase of eight months, and included the take up of Visiplan, the deal with InvestmentLink, and also the inclusion of insurance products within the group’s platforms in June.