Adviser platforms ranked in new report

According to the December 2016 Platform Benchmarking & Competitive Analysis Report, Netwealth remains in the number one position for overall platform functionality.

Hub24 came in second place while Colonial First State FirstWrap secured third place. Asgard eWrap and Macquarie Wrap came in fourth and fifth place, respectively.

Investment Trends senior analyst King Loong Choi said the platform industry in the past had been devoting their development spend to compliance, in line with regulatory changes.

This trend, however, was reversed in 2016, when platform providers began increasing spend on developing new functionality for advisers and their clients.

“After two years of hibernation and a focus on compliance, platform innovation has exploded in 2016,” said Mr Choi.

“Our latest competitive analysis of the platform industry found platform providers’ development efforts have been centred around two themes: improving planner efficiency and raising client engagement.”

According to the report, OneVue made the greatest advances in functionality, including a full dashboard refresh to enhance planners’ efficiency by providing them with easier access to actionable information about their business and clients.

Meanwhile, Netwealth started pre-populating their application forms with data from XPLAN, while Hub24 built the ability to pre-populate applications from any system.

“Having to re-key data which exist in one source to multiple other sources has long been a key technology gap for planners,” said Mr Choi.

“Netwealth and Hub24 had both taken steps to alleviate a key burden at a time where planners demand efficiency.

“Platform providers can remain competitive in the current environment by addressing planners’ key challenges. Aside from improving planner efficiency, providers can also better support planners with their client engagement efforts.”