COIN to play host in boutique planning battleground

The Macquarie Bank-owned front-end software provider COIN is testing a new version of its system designed to attract boutique financial planning businesses.

The Macquarie Bank-owned front-end software provider COIN is testing a new version of its system designed to attract boutique financial planning businesses. According to Tony Graham, COIN managing director, the group will be trialing a ‘hosted’ financial advisory software system that would allow boutique firms to store data with COIN rather than in their own offices. “A lot of financial planners don’t want to deal with technology,” Graham said. “It’s divided about 50/50 between those financial planning firms that want to keep data in their own offices and those who’d rather the technology was managed off-site.” He said the hosting strategy would enable COIN to compete more vigorously in the boutique advisory space with its major competitor, the newly-merged Xplan/Visiplan, which already offers a hosted version. COIN’s major successes to date have been in the institutional planning market with the group supplying planning software services to three of the four major banks. However, according to Graham, COIN has about 320 clients, including a dozen institutions, and 5,500 licensed users of the software. It is understood COIN is also close to signing up AMP Financial Planning, which could add a further 1,500 plus users. Combined Xplan/Visiplan could have as many as 12,500 licensed users. Graham said COIN would pilot the hosted product with several boutique financial advisory businesses over the next three to six months. “We have 95 staff now and we’re able to develop two structures – one to service the institutional market and the other looking after boutiques,” he