Objectmastery hits half billion mark in UK

Australianfirm Objectmastery has reached the $500 million mark for funds under advice with its UK-based Transact wrap account.

Group managing director Mike Howard says the company is on-target to achieve its goal of $1 billion of funds under administration by April 2003.

“We have achieved $180 million in inflows during the past 18 months in the UK and we now have 375 advisers from 200 firms using Transact,” he says.

Transact was launched in the UK in March 2000 to allow investors to manage their various investments through a single account.

Howard says the average investment in Transact is about £33,000, which is similar to average investments in master trusts in Australia.

The UK master trust/wrap account business is becoming more competitive, he says, with Skandia now having £1.5 billion of funds under advice.

“Skandia is trying to provide a wealth management program, while Fidelity has launched a copy of its US wrap into the UK,” Howard says.

Objectmastery is operating a smaller operation in the UK, with only four business development managers, compared to Fidelity’s 80, Howard says.

“We are seeing about 25 new advisers starting to use Transact each month, which means we should double the client base in the next year,” he says.

Howard also puts part of Transact’s success down to the numbers of investments available on the wrap. It now has about 6,000 investment choices, compared to Fidelity, which offers between 400 and 500 choices.

“When we first started, fund managers were reluctant to put their products on Transact as they feared their margins would be squeezed. Now they have discovered it is more profitable to distribute through a wrap, so we are attracting more managers,” he says.

Howard says the company is trying to get the wrap adopted by one of the big UK banks.