Financial solutions provider Wealth Within has launched an investment platform that offers SMSFs the ability to implement gearing strategies.
The Global One platform was designed as a unified managed account product with a number of additional features, many of which have been included to appeal specifically to the SMSF market.
The functionality aimed at SMSF members included direct property investments, compliance, life insurance and educational tools.
However Global One’s biggest attraction for SMSFs was its ability to be used as a vehicle to facilitate a limited recourse borrowing arrangement (LRBA) to acquire property.
“When a super fund borrows to purchase a property the asset must be held in a separate trust account and that’s a bare trust,” Wealth Within executive director Lea Zerbes said.
“So Global One itself as a managed investment scheme acts as the bare trust for the SMSF…So it eliminates the need for SMSF trustees to set up a separate bare trust.
“With the roll out of Global One we’re rolling out education on self-managed super fund borrowing for advisers and we’re also able to white label the environment for the adviser to be able to educate their clients as well.”
Wealth Within have arranged a strategic partnership with the Bendigo and Adelaide Bank to provide the loan facilities for the SMSF borrowing facility and has developed its own research process to ensure the quality of the property investments involved.
“We have a pre-vetting [property] filtering system internally. We look at the number of developments within a 15 kilometre radius of CBD Melbourne and Sydney and satellite cities as we progress,” Wealth Within managing director Denis Celata said.
From there Global One establishes the loan facility with the bank and then passes the property or development on the Property Investment Research for a final rating.
The platform can also manage LRBAs for independent direct properties.
In these situations the bank will assess the investment through a serviceability criteria taking into account items like the contributions made by the client to their SMSF and the interest rates of the loan before approving the investment.
