BT builds platform in Newcastle society

BT Financial Group has signed a deal with Newcastle Permanent Building Society to badge BT’s wrap suite as the core platform within the NSW central coast firm’s wealth management division.

The deal, which will see the building society badge both BT Wrap and BT Wrap Essentials as the Newcastle Permanent Investment Portfolio Wrap, adds to recent agreements between BT and Aon and FPS and is expected to be followed by two further deals in coming weeks according to BT wrap distribution director Don Sillar.

For the Newcastle deal, group general manager, mortgages and specialist businesses, Rob King says BT’s low cost platform offering -Wrap Essentials - is a good fit for its main client-base.

“With the majority of our members suited to BT ’s lower cost Wrap Essentials product, we will efficiently be able to manage our client base from a single desktop, eradicating the need for numerous platforms,” King says.

King says the simplicity of BT ’s custodial and compliance solutions was a key factor in the company’s decision.

“By outsourcing time consuming and complex administrative and compliance requirements, we ’re ensuring our advisors can spend more time with clients while exercising industry best practice,” King says.

Meanwhile, Sillar believes more dealer groups will continue to badge their administrative platforms as they seek to control delivery of the platform to customers.

BT Wrap, which now has $13.7 billion in funds under administration, has grown by more than $1 billion a quarter since early 2003 and equates to an aggregated growth over the past three years of more than 65 per cent per annum.