InvestmentLink has expanded its services with the roll out of its transaction processing service for retail managed funds, only one day after theAustralian Stock Exchange(ASX) andIWLannounced they had joined forces to provide a similar service.
According to InvestmentLink, its e-Portfolio Transaction Service will allow financial advisers and dealer groups to conduct a range of electronic transactions such as equity and fund purchases and make further investments or redemptions. e-Portfolio can also be used to provide consolidated reporting on client investments.
InvestmentLink chief executive Peter Philip says the use of the web-based service would cut costs within the industry by making the transactions between fund managers and advisers more efficient.
Philip also says the service will lead to the development of a new style of funds, labelled ‘e-Retail’, which will make use of paperless electronic processing to lower costs for managers, advisers and their clients.
The provision of transaction services has become an area of much activity in the market in recent weeks, with competing groups such as ASX with FundConnect, Ausmaq with MAINHub and most recently IWL with FundLink, indicating they will release their models within the next 12 months.
However yesterday the ASX and IWL stated the two would work together in this area with the ASX providing the front end for its FundConnnect project and IWL supplying its FundLink software to drive the project.
Philip says the InvestmentLink product has been under development for two years and the company has an eight year history as well as an established market presence with its consolidation services among dealer groups.
“We have a competitive advantage over our competitors in that our e-Portfolio service is already used by thousands of advisers and those advisers can now begin transacting retail investments using the same service,” Philip says.
According to Philip, the e-Portfolio service will work across a range of software platforms and dealers can brand the service and incorporate it into their own client services offerings.
The news of the rollout comes less than three weeks after InvestmentLink signed a deal to provide its e-Portfolio consolidation service to AMP Financial Services’ dealer groups, AMP Financial Planning and Hillross.
Under this deal, the e-Portfolio system will be fully integrated into AMP’s online reporting platform and gather client investment information into a single report. The service is also in use byCount Wealth Accountants,Colonial Financial Planning, TD Waterhouse andMacquarie Strategic Financial Planning.
