An online share trading platform has fine-tuned its offering, specifically building in unique functionality to service SMSF clients.
Marketech has tailored its Focus option to allow SMSF trustees to transact in a simpler manner, which they are unable to do with other online equity trading services.
“Marketech’s focus allows people to open an account in their own name, in their own name and their spouse, in the name of their SMSF, in the name of their family trust or in the name of their private company,” Marketech chief executive Travis Clark noted.
“With other platforms you can only trade shares in your own personal name. You’d then have to do some sort of extraction of that asset from the pooled trust and then you’d have to do an off-market transfer to your super fund. The process is cost prohibitive and administration prohibitive.”
Marketech Focus uses the Macquarie cash management account product to settle trades, which is a preferred product in the SMSF sector.
Clark describes the platform as data heavy and providing live information from the Australian Securities Exchange.
“The share market is obviously a pretty dangerous place at the best of times, so we made sure clients have got all of the information a semi-professional investor would require. It doesn’t make available that high-level professional, really serious data set, but it can if we get demand for it,” he said.
“This platform is very much for people who are actively monitoring their investments as opposed to investors who see the market tumble and want to top up some of their specific holdings.”
Marketech has built in a flat-fee pricing structure where clients using the Focus option are charged $45 a month and 0.02 per cent brokerage fees.
This differs from other online share trading platforms, which usually charge clients per trade, which in turn potentially encourages more frequent trading.
Marketech Focus was released midway through 2020 and had a new product release in December. Clark said the response from SMSFs has been good and added its aim is not to service hundreds and thousands of SMSF clients, but rather sign on a smaller number and look after them well.
