Zurich Financial Services has announced it will offer a web based investment product which offers superannuation and personal investments in the same package.
Life and asset management general manager Lester Doecke says the product, dubbed i.super_invest, is a corporate super master trust pitched to small to medium enterprise (SME) style businesses, but also has an integrated investment (or unit trust) master trust component.
This component will offer the master trust service to each employee of a business and allow them to create their own individual master trust.
Doecke says the products are actually two different vehicles but when accessed by employees or employers will appear as one with combined transaction and reporting capabilities.
Employees will also be able to use the combined level of funds to access lower fees on the managed funds, with the starting level of 1.4 per cent at $100,000 dropping to 0.6 per cent at $2 million. Beyond that the fees are open to negotiation.
At the same time advisers will still receive their remuneration through trail commissions as well as through dial up fees.
Doecke says Zurich set up the services to leverage off the advice planners give when seeking corporate super business but expanding that to provide access to personal investment for super fund members.
“For advisers, corporate super can be not as great an area in which to work because it is a highly focused product offering. However, with this type of product employees get their own fully transportable master trust and may seek advice as to how they can use this for their own personal investments,” Doecke says.
“In essence what it means is that in an SME with 20 employees, the planner gets 21 clients including the company which has the corporate super plan and can keep in contact with employees as they move to other jobs.”
The master trust will offer 40 funds from a range of fund managers with 12 of those coming from the Zurich stable. The funds are chosen by an external consultant, who Zurich has declined to name, but emphasises that the list will be updated when needed in the event conditions change at the managers.
Doecke says these circumstances would have to be extraordinary as the change would mean transferring client funds as well as a high degree of administration for it and advisers.
The product is the first of a suite of products to work off the web based platform and will be joined shortly by payroll packaging and employee benefits products.
Doecke says Zurich is also planning on rolling out the i.super-invest product as a stand alone product to be accessed by individuals outside an SME, with the only difference being that individuals will not have access to fee discounts.
