Boutique firm first to use managed fund platform

OpenMarkets said the trade, placed by Quill was executed directly with an unnamed "major managed funds" provider in real-time, where the assets were registered in the investor’s own name.

Speaking to ifa, OpenMarkets managing director Rick Klink said its new trading hub will provide a “simplistic” and cheap process to execute asset trades.

“Advisers are under constant pressure to demonstrate value to their clients,” Mr Klink said.

“Lowering the costs of execution, while providing access to a range of asset classes, is aimed at empowering the adviser to deliver a better service to their client,” he said.

OpenMarkets head of sales Leo Lopez also pointed out that the trading hub is about “benefiting the adviser” and the end-client through the process.

“Many advisers we speak to have clients that still want to retain control of part of their portfolio. The advisers haven’t had the ability to provide both direct access and oversight, and integration to the administration, at a lower cost to the end-client,” Mr Lopez said.

“MATH provides that opportunity and flexibility across the asset classes,” he added.

Mr Klink also said MATH which operates in a similar manner to the ASX settlement service mFund was established to provide clients access to funds that “aren’t available on the mFund service”.

“What we have found is, some of our clients actually have the products that they want us to execute are currently not included in the mfund range,” Mr Klink said.

“[Also] for the client it kind of looks the same as mFund in terms of what we do, but it is a more simplistic process and we can expand it more rapidly across more managed fund types,” Mr Klink said.