Colonial First State has abandoned its two-year old self-managed super administration platform, YourChoice, with clients informed yesterday they would be transferred to an ING-owned alternative.
A Colonial First State (CFS) spokesperson said YourChoice’s 600 clients would be better off administered by Super Concepts, a division of ING, because it was a specialist provider. With the creation of 30,000 SMSFs under its belt, a direct client base of 1500 and an intermediary base numbering 1200, Super Concepts would also appear to have a level of scale which YourChoice came nowhere near achieving. Rolled out in May 2006, YourChoice had amassed $50 million under management within three months, with the Professional Investment Services group anointing it as its first nationally-added SMSF admin service. However, SMSF industry observers said YourChoice, in common with similar offerings rolled out by the big banks, had struggled in a fragmented and low-margin market which required a quite different skill-set from the reporting and compliance required for pooled managed funds. The precise arrangements for the transfer of YourChoice clients to Super Concepts have not been finalised. The CFS spokesperson added that the 15 staff effected would be offered other positions within the Commonwealth Bank/CFS group.
22/07/2008
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Alternatives
The chief investment officer of the $150 billion industry super fund says that Hostplus’ portfolio will weather the ongoing downturn in software companies and that moves by a number of large private credit managers to gate their funds are a result of the asset class being offered to retail investors who should not have assumed the funds would be liquid enough to get money out when everybody else is trying to do the same.
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