BT Financial Group (BTFG) has experienced good uptake of BT Panorama, with most new business being SMSFs, and is now focused on converting its SMSF connections in advice distribution and banking channels over to the operating system.
“We have over 3000 SMSFs on Panorama now and that’s accelerating as we go out, and we’ve spent $390 million [as at 30 September 2016], with the total expected cost to be around $630 million,” BTFG platforms and investments general manager John Shuttleworth told selfmanagedsuper.
“Through the advice side, because we’ve got about 120,000 SMSFs through dealer groups and our advisers in practices, our existing distribution team call on the advisers all the time to get them to use the Panorama platform and most of the SMSFs are coming through our traditional adviser channels.
“Within the bank – the private, premium and business banks – there are quite a lot of SMSFs, so what we’ve been doing is training the bankers around our SMSF solution and so they can have a conversation with a customer who has a term deposit in the name of an SMSF, for example, around how they’re managing it.
“So over time I think that’s how we’ll be doing it; through those relationship-managed channels because SMSFs are so technical and you don’t want to be selling this, and you don’t want to be doing this if there’s no advice or if it’s a non-relationship-managed process.”
There were around 120,000 SMSFs in BTFG’s advised and licensed accountant distribution network and 100,000 SMSFs with a linked bank deposit account, which was a significant opportunity to capitalise on, Shuttleworth said.
At a media lunch in Sydney last week, Shuttleworth highlighted the significant opportunity for BTFG to consolidate and grow established relationships on the Panorama platform.
“We’ve been successful growing BT Wrap to 20 per cent of the market, so it is conceivable that over a number of years we could get to 20 per cent of the SMSF market,” he said.
“Even if we got to 10 per cent, that’s $65 billion in assets, so this is such a massive opportunity for us to capitalise on and there’s been no significant player [in the SMSF market].”
BT Panorama was launched in April 2016. Development first started in 2012.
