BT Financial Group (BTFG) will look to create better flow between processes for its SMSF-related services, such as borrowing, on its BT Panorama platform over the next 12 months.
“To take borrowing as an example, there are three distinct services,” BTFG head of SMSF Craig Lawrenson told selfmanagedsuper.
“One is establishing funds and having deeds that allow for the provision of lending, which we do – we provide the services clearly around establishing funds with either a corporate or individual trustee.
“In terms of the documentation, we have a third-party arrangement with a legal firm who provides and supports the documentation for the provision of the bare trust.
“And then Westpac from a lending perspective takes up the credit or lending processes around that, so those three services, as they stand today, are reasonably separate processes.”
Lawrenson said given BTFG was able to control many aspects of the client journey, it was looking to bring more and more of those processes together on the platform.
“The more we can do that on Panorama the better it will be for advisers, accountants and trustees,” he said.
“It is on the list of things we’ve got to do and it’s hard to confirm a time frame, but it’s certainly on our roadmap over the next 12 months.
“We’re always talking to our users, so based on their feedback if that ups the ante for prioritisation, then we’ll obviously react to [their needs].”
Commenting on whether BT Panorama would look to integrate SMSF audits in some capacity in the future, he said: “It’s not in our near-term thinking to be an auditor of other people’s funds, outside of providing that service as part of our fund administration business.
“What we want to do, and part of where this can go, is how we can support the provision or the access of audits to our data to make their processes more efficient.
“We’ve always built Panorama around collaboration, giving all the stakeholders in the SMSF access, so that could naturally extend to giving access to auditors, and one of the benefits of housing that on a platform like ours is that you have a single place to view those assets, so there is an opportunity for us to help that auditing process.”
