Perpetual dives into low-cost platforms
PerpetualInvestmentshas unveiled details of its own low-cost platform, WealthFocus, ahead of next month’s launch in response to an assessment that “pure retail funds are dead in the water”.
The platform, open to investments in late October, comprises three divisions: investments, superannuation and allocated pensions. The investment division has 57 options, while superannuation and allocated pensions both have 53 options. The difference is the exclusion for the latter two divisions of four international regional funds, as Perpetual general manager advisory distribution Damien Crowley believes these are unlikely to be in demand.
Crowley says the launch was fuelled by shifts in adviser and investor needs.
“The market out there has clearly changed, and pure retail is effectively dead in the water. Advisers just aren’t using pure retail funds anymore, they’re using master funds or high level wraps and master funds for high-net-worth clients,” he says.
The platform, according to Crowley, effectively replaces the group’s growth series, which has over $3 billion in assets, and its superannuation and allocated pension series, which have about $860,000 and $250,000 in assets respectively, with these funds to merge into the WealthFocus platform.
“The move is partly defensive but it’s also partly because we’ve put in a new administration system [InfoComp’s Composer] over the past two and a half years and we wouldn’t have been able to think about this without it,” Crowley says.
“We started with a clean sheet and went out to about 20 of the key dealer groups and asked ‘what are the funds that you’re actually using that you want on this menu?’”
More than half of the options are offered by 17 external managers.UBS Global Asset Managementis the most prominent manger in the line-up, with five of its funds being included.
Fees are dependent on which of these options are chosen, and Crowley says they do not exceed 1.9 per cent.
“It’s competitive pricing in line with the likes of FirstChoice, Skandia,INGOne Answer,BTWrap Essential and the revampedMLCMasterKey offering,” he says.
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