FOFA behind Midwinter relaunch

While stressing its existing desktop product Reasonable Basis would still be supported and updated, the new cloud-based solution addresses several shortcomings with the old offer while fully meeting Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) requirements, the group stated.

The new AdviceOS offer will integrate more fully with other data feeds, including commission systems such as Easy Dealer, helping it to prepopulate fee disclosure statements (FDSs), Midwinter national head of distribution Peter Burns said.

“We’ve gone from being a ‘Reasonable Basis’ house to rebranding under AdviceOS; that better encompasses what we’re all about: providing that holistic solution to not only the financial planner space but also the dealer group space,” Mr Burns said.

An adviser can grant support staff varying levels of access as needed as well as allowing clients access to their portfolios and a new range of calculators (including budgeting, super, insurance, pension drawdown and loan calculators) and allowing them to suggest changes to their investments (sending an alert to the adviser who can accept or reject changes) and update their details.

The client portal is mobile enabled, meaning clients can access it on iPads and other tablets and mobile devices, while the adviser can also view all client calculations at any stage.

Advisers can share documents such as statements of advice, records of advice and FDSs with clients

Midwinter managing director Julian Plummer said AdviceOS will help with client segmentation, and was designed to be useful to advisers with fully segmented through to completely non segmented client bases.

AdviceOS will be rolled out in three stages with the first stage available now (following a trial with non-aligned groups Gold Financial and Neo Financial Solutions) featuring all the core advice and clients management tools and FOFA options. The final stage, featuring the full portfolio review and product packages including managed fund research will be ready by September, the group stated.