Zurich Financial Services has begun operations of a new master trust administration service which will be on offer to dealer groups in an outsourcing arrangement.
The Orion service has been built using the core of the Associated Planners master trust business and staff and is in use by Associated Planners and Zurich.
Zurich is currently negotiating a deal to acquire a 30 per cent stake in Associated Planners following a memorandum of understanding between the two groups in December.
The Orion service is also being used by Zurich to support its new i.super-invest product which combines corporate superannuation with a master trust offering for each employee of a company.
Zurich life and asset management general manager Lester Doecke says Orion has been developed to support the new product.
“Since there is no system like i.super-invest elsewhere, we didn’t want others to have access to the back offices system. This way we can keep the competitive advantage before both systems start to be copied,” Doecke says.
“We felt not many administration services do that well either. We feel that if advisers need specialised information they should let a specialist provide it, especially as administration is a critical issue.”
The new service will sit along Zurich’s existing Dealer Back Office Service (DBOS), which was launched in July last year.
