Etrade will become one of Praemium’s biggest clients following the roll-out of a new portfolio administration service for financial intermediaries which began last week, according to Arthur Naoumidis, Praemium chief.

Naoumidis said after six months of testing Etrade last week released the new portfolio management service to the thousands of financial intermediaries (chiefly financial planners and stockbrokers) who use the Etrade Pro tool, which is driven by the Praemium administration “engine”. “Between the soft launch and now some of the Etrade financial intermediaries have already signed up for the Praemium service,” Naoumidis said. “There are probably 200,000 or so portfolios being managed by Etrade intermediaries and we would hope to get a fair few of them.” He said Etrade and CitiGroup Wealth Advisors, which uses Etrade for its fee-based CapitalPlus Enhanced portfolio reporting system, would quickly develop into Praemium’s top two clients. As well, Naoumidis said Praemium’s SMA business, which began with the launch of a Merrill Lynch product last year, would rapidly expand in the next couple of years Praemium has also passed the $10 billion mark in funds under administration, up from the $6.5 billion it reported last August. The company is still on track for listing on the ASX in four to six weeks with support from a “number of institutional investors”, according to Naoumidis. He said once the listing was complete Praemium would then quickly be able to expand to the UK where there have been “expressions of interest” from several firms there.