Changes to financial services legislation would see more accountants offering strategic advice and reduce the number of financial planners involved with self-managed superannuation funds (SMSFs), said Ron Lesh, CEO of BGL.
“A very small percentage of SMSFs are under advice from planners, primarily because planners don’t have much they can offer,” Lesh said. “If the accountants can provide strategic advice, a lot of funds with planners will move back to accountants. It will be a shift over time but I think it will happen.”
BGL planned to release its cloud program Simple Fund 360 in November as a public beta. The official launch would be held early next year.
BGL also appeared to confirm another regulation-driven trend first predicted by rival Praemium. Praemium had recently launched added a customer management program so advisers could record an audit trail of communications, documents and interactions with clients. The Wealthcraft solution integrated Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online with Praemium’s SMSF portfolio and reporting platform.
BGL would help SMSF administrators set up SugarCRM to manage their clients and integrate the CRM with Simple Fund 360, Lesh said. BGL had recently moved to SugarCRM and had hired a developer to customise it for the software company.
“SMSF administrators have all these systems that don’t hook into the SMSF platform. We can do it for them,” Lesh said. The free, basic version of SugarCRM “would give them all they need”, Lesh added.