Platforms 'on the cusp' of innovation

The next wave of investment platforms needs to be integrated and sophisticated enough to combine decisions around asset and product classes, mixed with lifestyle data, health considerations, and macroeconomic datasets.

Such was the opinion of Financial Services Institute of Australasia (FINSIA) chief executive, Russell Thomas, who said while the industry was on the cusp of seeing innovative, engaging digital platforms come to the market, the space still lacked extra modelling tools that took additional data of customers into consideration.

"What we don't have at the moment is the tools online to make the same application be able to see future projections of your current investment mix, to link that to broader lifestyle factors that apply to your particular cohort and demographic, and a tool that enables you to model different scenarios based on your likely future earnings and retirement income," Thomas said.

While these datasets have been available previously to life insurance companies, Russell said it should be available for all investment models on a single platform.

The first stage of innovation over the last five years involved payment systems, where customers could do online banking, switch funds between accounts seamlessly, and the ability to see all financial dealings, including bank accounts, credit cards and superannuation, in the one space.

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"We haven't yet, though, seen sophisticated products come to the market, which enables investors, consumers, and users to be able to understand the investment models that are at play and to be able to test the compositions and impact on returns of different decisions," Thomas said.