Yes, No and Maybe?

The market is an interesting place these days, and investors and their advisers are increasingly looking at improvements to the bottom line of their investments.
While reducing fees and costs are the obvious strategy, this can sometimes not achieve the desired result.

Over the last 12 months, we have almost daily calls from advisers,  AFSL brokers or Dealer groups looking at improving the service levels to their clients, we get very few call from accountants?
Is this because accountants are not seen to affect the bottom line..

The following is a quick summary of what we see in the market today, across the 45,000 daily portfolio's we process.

1. We have seen a gradual increase in the number of groups looking to move clients from existing brokers/ASX participants, to ones which offer cost and service advantages, especially in the managed portfolio area.
2. Their is an increased focus on client services, especially those that allow the client to have full transparency to their investments. 
3. Clients expect their investments to be on-line and available just like their online banking, and they don't expect to pay a fortune to access their own data.
4. End of Year tax preparation and access to tax data has become the number one feature request for our clients and advisers.
5. Over the last three months we have seen a rapid growth of clients moving from ASX participants, onto Interactive brokers (IB) global investment brokerage service.

While the focus will increasingly be on fees and cost, most of the smart advisers see the opportunity to offer their client enhanced, client centric services as a means to retain their existing clients in these difficult times, and to attract new clients from their "old" style set and forget advisers..

Will investors start trading again? yes,NO or Maybe?
The answers is always based upon access to reliable and up to date information, and of course the skills of the adviser or investor..

We can help with the first issue.


Charles Moore
CEO VillageMall Pty Ltd

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