Macquarie, Colonial First State take platform honours
Macquarie Wrap has gone back-to-back in being rated first in the annual Wealth Insights Platform Service Level Reporting Rankings, with Colonial FirstChoice again rated second.
Colonial First State (CFS) continued its run of success, being ranked first again in the Fund Manager Service Level report, followed by Vanguard.
The announcement of the Platform Service Level rankings came almost at the same time as Colonial First State announced that the FirstChoice platform had achieved a milestone by reaching $50 billion in funds under advice (FUA) - fractionally ahead of its first anniversary later this month.
Commenting on the outcome of this year's rankings, Wealth Insights managing director Vanessa McMahon said Macquarie Wrap and FirstChoice appeared to have emerged as dominant forces in the platform space.
However, she noted that that IOOF's Pursuit platform, which had been ranked first in 2010, had continued to perform well.
McMahon said there seemed to be little separating the Macquarie Wrap and CFS offerings, but CFS had managed to remain on top with respect to overall satisfaction.
"We are looking at a sector where the relative performance of these products matters to those charged with running them," McMahon said.
"Boards and senior management are looking to external measures with respect to peers, and the third party nature of this research means there are no biases in the data," she said.
CFS chief executive Brian Bissaker acknowledged the importance of continuous improvement with respect to the platform.
He said the company was continuing to invest in the underlying infrastructure and also to examine new offerings, including whether new services might be developed to help underpin the changes inherent in the Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) legislation.
However he said that in terms of FOFA, the FirstChoice wholesale offering had been FOFA-compliant for a number of years.
Macquarie's head of platforms Justin Delaney attributed the back-to-back wins to the company's focus on financial adviser requirements.
"We've continued to direct our energies towards what the client wants and needs," he said.
However Delaney said this did not necessarily mean that Macquarie Wrap would be looking to add new elements to the platform.
"Adviser satisfaction is what counts, and we've never really believed that is driven by bells and whistles," he said. "Consistency of service is what matters."
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