Midwinter Financial Services today announced its integration with Class, allowing users of both platforms to sync and replicate portfolios from the SMSF administration provider into the financial advice tech firm’s AdviceOS.
The integration also enables Class funds to be pre-populated, updated and used throughout AdviceOS like a normal portfolio.
“The main advantage is creating and updating portfolios. Some portfolios, especially SMSFs, can be quite extensive with shares, managed funds and other assets like property,” Midwinter executive director and chief technology officer Andrew McClelland told selfmanagedsuper.
“If you need to create a portfolio of say 20 to 30 investments, it may take 10-plus minutes. Every time you want to know the latest balance for providing ongoing advice, it may take this long again to ensure the portfolio in the advice system reflects the balance in Class.
“These are now instantly created and instantly updated, saving valuable time when onboarding new clients or providing reviews.
“Furthermore, it will reduce any human error in making these portfolios available in the advice system.”
McClelland said it is often the case that clients may have SMSF portfolios through Class, but also other assets in AdviceOS that are not in Class.
“The new integration allows the Class SMSF to be instantly available in AdviceOS and combined with their other assets to provide a total portfolio analysis of the client’s full investments under each ownership structure,” he said.
“This information can then be used to provide an overall risk profile and assist in modelling with the latest balances.”
He said through this new partnership, Midwinter is further opening up the suite of choices for advisers when it comes to picking their “tech stack, which at the end of the day should be the focus of the future within financial planning technology”.
The concept of the open application programming interface is no longer a new-age philosophy and is a must-have for any fintech that wants to be operating in five years’ time, he added.
Class strategic alliances director Glenn Poynton said this latest integration allows data to be seamlessly shared between the users of Class and Midwinter, and provides a single view of wealth across all investment portfolios.
Meanwhile, Class also announced the addition of multi-factor authentication (MFA) to its cloud-based products, Class Super and Class Portfolio.
The SMSF administration provider said the move comes amid growing concern about cloud-based systems and client privacy as more data becomes available online and more systems are connected via application programming interfaces.
Administrators and access controllers have the choice to make it compulsory for selected users through centralised deployment or request employees across the business to turn it on individually, it said. They can also view and report on which users have or have not enabled MFA, it said.
The introduction of MFA complies with the ATO’s new operational framework for digital software providers that provide cloud software products or services that read, modify or route any tax or super-related information, it noted.
“As the ATO works towards making MFA a mandatory requirement, Class will, for now, allow firms to opt some users out as a transitional measure,” it said.
