New Year, New SMSF-Taxation service

We plan to launch a lite version of our existing Web Superfund service, for Australian SMSFs'.

The objective is to move from the existing cottage SMSF industry, into the fee structure of the Industry Superannuation funds; while meeting the SMSF specific compliance, and audit requirements.
We estimate a total yearly fee of ~$250 for the service, which will allow advisers to recommend SMSF to clients, with FUM below the existing $250k minimum.
We expect this to change the face of SMSF's in Australia..

This service is fully integrated with all BPS services, for a zero admin trading solution.
This service is targeted towards specialist SMSF Administrators, or accountants supplying services to SMSF's with investments, this service is not suitable for operation by trustees, and is compatible with BGL Simple Fund operation.. Most existing BGL administrators should be able to use our service without any training.

The features of service are as follows:

• Must be linked to an existing BPS service, and access account.
•  Includes up to two Trustee/Members (98% of all SMSF's).
•  Includes, a single access account for funds nominated auditor, for end of year audit purposes.
•  Integrated ATO registered SMSF Tax Return.
•  End of day price feed, for ASX and Morning star funds
•  Suitable for Australian registered Self Managed Super Funds, with 2 trustees/members, in accumulation mode.
• Accountant/SMSF Admin centric service.

This service is a wholesale only service, available to Accountants and specialist SMSF Administrators, via their ASX participant, Broker or Dealer Group.

Expected release is third Qtr 2012, based on Interactive Brokers.

Any group wishing to be involved with the roll-out of this service please contact me.

Charles Moore

CEO VillageMall Pty Ltd
Office: +61 7 3861 9337

Disclaimer The contents of this site should not be understood to be accounting, taxation or investment advice but rather as general product related educational information that may or may not meet your specific requirements.

Low cost, breadth of product, and technology innovation

Low cost, breadth of product, and technology innovation consistently drive our progress and provide unique advantages to VillageMall customers.

Print media is dead, online shopping is decimating the traditional bricks and mortar business like Harvey Normal...

Yet, investors still pay though the nose for almost every aspect of their activities, from high trading fees, though to excessive accounting and tax return charges. While technologies have drastically reduced the costs of  all most all aspects of investing, very little has flowed though to end investor.

Australia is still one of the few countries where an investor is charged significant fees just to enter a trade, this is caused by almost monopoly providers, as a result, the technologies are in many cases light years behind world best practice.

We often hear about the horror stories when an advisory group, has invested substantial amounts of money, and yet cannot get the very basic of investment reports, in many cases the problem lies partly with the advisor group which seeks our "custom" solution to what is an industry solution.

VillageMall supplies world best practice standardized "Investment and Tax reporting solutions" out of the box, specifically tailored to meet Australian tax reporting requirements across 132 markets worldwide, and 16 currencies.

And yes, it works out-of-box first time..

Charles Moore
CEO VillageMall Pty Ltd


Disclaimer The contents of this site should not be understood to be accounting, taxation or investment advice but rather as general product related educational information that may or may not meet your specific requirements.

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

Disclaimer The contents of this site should not be understood to be accounting, taxation or investment advice but rather as general product related educational information that may or may not meet your specific requirements.

Its all about costs...

2012, is becoming the year of cost reductions..

Almost daily we receive calls  from AFSL brokers, Dealer groups, and SMSF admins looking for ways to reduce their costs, and keep their existing clients; in fact this is trend is not limited to any specific market segment but across the board.

Over the years we have worked with many organisations as they have tried to handle increased volumes of work with existing staffing, we saw the outsourcing of data entry to India, then Malaysia etc.. As the labour costs rise in this countries we see organisations looking for long term solutions, as the costs to establish and train low cost labour remains static, and the replay periods decrease.

In our view, there is a simple solution, increase the level of automation, computers work 24*7 and costs actually decrease with volume, and over time.

The problem to date with this approach is that  high levels of automation have not been possible, until very recently, any automation process which does not deliver 100% solution is pretty useless, as it takes more effort to find the missing or inaccurate processing.

VillageMall is please to announce.. the very first 100% automated portfolio and tax reporting solution with the lastest release of our Broker Portfolio Service (BPS)..

BPS fully automates all investment related activities, this includes all corporate actions and transactions.
Additionally BPS, can be linked to our Web Portfolio and Web SuperFund services , to create  a zero admin investment service. No imports or exports required..

A typical Portfolio Service from say Bell Potter, has a minimium fee of $2,125 per year, BPS can now supply the same service from as little as $45/year.. with Zero staff.

Yes, this is a game changer..

Check out the details..

Charles Moore
CEO- VillageMall Pty Ltd
Direct: +71 7 3256 7465







Disclaimer The contents of this site should not be understood to be accounting, taxation or investment advice but rather as general product related educational information that may or may not meet your specific requirements.

Platforms 2012

Will 2012 be the year of the next generation platforms?


As we all know, the retail platform business model is under pressure from:

• A large and growing self-directed investor segment which is using SMSFs as its preferred vehicle
• Rotation by planners away from managed funds to direct assets (including equities and term deposits)
• Improvements in technology which are allowing planners to rotate away from traditional platforms entirely; i.e Web Superfund or Managed Accounts linked to SMSF platform.

Those pressures are most evident at the top of the market, but they won't stop there. Already this is starting to erode traditional platforms’ and fund managers’ dominance of retail flows and assets, and ability to maintain pricing levels.

If you take a long term view of the evolution of the industry, the business model is in transition. The dominance of the existing model is fading, but the dominant new model is not yet clear. This environment is particularly difficult for big players, and favours insurgents and innovators. But it will pass, so hang in there.

Clearly there is a time for change, and for starters 2012 should see more new low-cost services offered directly.


Here’s why:

• The removal of embedded remuneration has leveled pricing between the planner and direct channels.
• SMSF's a niche segment but it controls a substantial percentage of super assets.

The problem is that SMSF's is a "cottage" industry, with no economies of scale to match the retail platforms.


While there are in excess of 400,000 ATO registered SMSF's, the top SMSF administrators hold less that 5,000 funds, many are run out of small accounting practices with less than a dozen funds.


Today SMSF's have in excess of $100 billion of listed equities and $80 billion of cash and deposits alone..


What is required is retail fund economies of scale, while at the same time meeting the mandatory SMSF specific compliance requirements..


Dealer groups, and Advisors, check out our Managed Account linked, Zero administration Web Superfund service, which is aimed at exactly this $180 billion market.


Charles Moore
CEO VillageMall Pty Ltd



Disclaimer The contents of this site should not be understood to be accounting, taxation or investment advice but rather as general product related educational information that may or may not meet your specific requirements.

The FOFA (Future of Financial Advice) reforms and ongoing market volatility is causing many financial planners to look at ways to create or improve value for their clients

As the uncertainty in investment markets continued, managed accounts were becoming increasingly popular among investors and financial planners.

With the FOFA (Future of Financial Advice) reforms and ongoing market volatility causing many financial planners to look at ways to create or improve value for their clients, managed account solutions are being looked at more closely.

Managed discretionary accounts are particularly attractive for planners as they can be tailored to suit the requirements and licensing structure of a financial planner's business and deal with flexibility around custody structures and investment reporting, plus unlike many pooled investments like managed Funds and MIS, and even SMA with beneficial ownership an MDA can be setup with fully segregated HIN and bank account for each client..

With a properly setup MDA a dealer group can offer advisors the ability to offer professionally managed Investments, directly owned by the client, with the same ease as a traditional managed Fund..

Disclaimer The contents of this site should not be understood to be accounting, taxation or investment advice but rather as general product related educational information that may or may not meet your specific requirements.

International Cuisine

Buying American may be frowned upon at the supermarket, but it isn't always a bad thing.
An American diet of hot dogs and fries may not be great for your health, but being too "Australian" focused when investing could be damaging to your wealth.

The global financial crisis significantly increased investors' worst fears about the stockmarket being risky. As a consequence, many consider it prudent to play it safe by investing in domestic markets and companies they know. Yet the ideal investment portfolio is believed to be all about diversification and against putting all your eggs in one basket. Standard investment portfolio theory says investors should diversify across many markets in the hope that when one falls another will rise to smooth out the final result.

Based on this conventional wisdom, Australia – representing just 3% of the global economy – deserves just 3 cents of the investment dollar. But Australian investors usually ignore this rule and, on average, put nearly 80 cents into local investments. The bias to investing at home, instead of abroad, comes at a price – a higher cost of capital for businesses.

The recent credit crunch hit America hard because its popular managed funds had invested 87% in domestic companies, and many were affected by the severe US recession. Yet that is not as parochial as some other countries – Japan, China, Brazil, Taiwan, Thailand, India and Malaysia – where more than 95% is invested locally. The exceptions to the rule, with less than about 30% invested at home, are Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Singapore and Switzerland.

The local market also has a heavy leaning to resources and small-caps relative to the MSCI World Index. So while the Australian index has generated higher returns, it's a narrower and riskier market. Most informed investors are aware of the domestic market's financials and resources tilts. This helped fuel the strong returns from the Australian share market over the middle of the past decade, but it was also a principal reason why the local market was challenged in 2008.

The two aforementioned sectors accounted for almost 60% of the S&P/ASX 300 Accumulation Index at March 31 2009. On the other hand, very few technology, healthcare or consumer staples firms are local index constituents. The last two were the place to be in 2008, and savvy global share fund managers were able to position their portfolios appropriately. "Australian-only investors don't have this luxury."

Ask your advisor about a "Global Trader" Managed Account Service.

Charles Moore

CEO VillageMall Pty Ltd
+61 7 3256 7465