Direct share trading for financial planners has taken another leap forward with the ASX awarding the first Third Party Clearing (TPC) broker status to a Melbourne firm.
Australian Clearing Services (ACS) has been awarded Australia’s first TPC broker status and is starting a pilot operation immediately, ac-cording to managing director Alasdair Thomson.
ACS has now launched two subsidiary companies as part of a restruc-turing to handle the new operation. ACS Broker Services will handle TPC work
Direct share trading for financial planners has taken another leap forward with the ASX awarding the first Third Party Clearing (TPC) broker status to a Melbourne firm.
Australian Clearing Services (ACS) has been awarded Australia’s first TPC broker status and is starting a pilot operation immediately, ac-cording to managing director Alasdair Thomson.
ACS has now launched two subsidiary companies as part of a restruc-turing to handle the new operation. ACS Broker Services will handle TPC work while ACS Management will continue to handle the existing agency-style business, Thomson says.
“We have started testing a pilot scheme for TPC so that we can be satisfied that areas like risk management are working properly when we start seeking clients for the service,” he says.
It is expected the pilot scheme will run for about three months. “Be-cause this is a brand new business, the first in Australia, we don’t want to underestimate the implications of running such a service,” Thomson says.
Third party clearing has long been mooted as a major breakthrough for the financial planning industry as it will give advisers better ac-cess to the floats on the ASX and a direct route to listed shares.
Under the new rules, financial planning firms that want to deal di-rectly with the stock market will have to register as a trading par-ticipant. They can use companies likes ACS to provide the back-office operation.
Thomson says financial planning firms need to decide what their strategy is going to be before seeking a trading participant status.
“We will be targeting the larger financial planning firms to use our service once the pilot scheme has been tested,” he says.
“However, we would recommend firms apply for a participant’s author-ity from the ASX in conjunction with seeking a TPC supplier, to en-sure both are in place at the same time.”
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