Perth-based APA Financial Services Ltd has signed a deal with Tricom Investment Management Ltd to introduce a new Separately Managed Account service, the company has announced.
Perth-based APA Financial Services Ltd has signed a deal with Tricom Investment Management Ltd to introduce a new Separately Managed Account service, the company has announced.
The full text of a company announcement is pasted below
APA Financial Services (ASX CODE: "APP") is pleased to announce that it has signed an agreement with Tricom Investment Management Ltd ("Tricom") for the introduction of a Separately Managed Account ("SMA") service.
Tricom Investment Management Limited is a member of the Tricom group of companies which also includes Tricom Equities Ltd, Tricom Futures Services Pty Limited, and Tricom Nominees Pty Ltd.
Tricom Equities Limited is a participant of the ASX Group, and Tricom Futures Services Pty Limited is a full participant of the Sydney Futures Exchange. Through its offices across Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, China, Hong Kong and London, and a global network of strategic partners, Tricom has the ability to transact on every major regulated financial market in the world.
Tricom is authorised to deal in many financial products such as equities, options, warrants, listed interest bearing securities, futures contracts, foreign exchange contracts, metals, commodities and contracts for difference (CFDs). Tricom's range of services also includes IPO's, securities lending, Shortinvest, managed accounts, managed funds, market research and portfolio administration.
The Tricom/APA SMA is expected to be launched by December 2007. SMA's are investment vehicles which retain the benefits of professional funds management, yet avoid the taxation inefficiencies of traditional managed funds.
They provide investors with their own individual portfolio of securities with transparency and portability. The Tricom/APA Managed Account service has been constructed to allow direct access to existing investment managers participating in this service, but can also be configured to allow a dealer group to brand its own managed account portfolio using its preferred portfolio managers.
The Tricom/APA SMA solution will have the following significant features:
- Brand your own SMA
A dealer group can set its own model portfolio, or use its preferred investment managers (subject to their agreement to participate), with the potential to brand it as the Dealer's own. The Tricom/APA service provides a ready made solution, implements and re-balances the portfolios, and offers the product to the Dealer and its clients via a dual PDS structure.
- Use existing "Best of Breed" Managers
Separately Managed Accounts, managed by "best of breed" boutique investment managers such as Ralton Asset Management Limited will be made immediately available via the SMA service.
- Gearing
Investors can gain leverage from their capital by gearing their portfolio with Tricom's securities lending facility. Tricom will lend up to 70% of the value of the portfolio. Hence, an investor with a $100,000 cash investment can have a maximum of $333,333 invested. Alternatively, if an investor has a substantial holding in one stock or a portfolio of stocks, Tricom can use these as collateral to fully fund a new personal SMA portfolio without the need for the investor to surface any cash.
- Reporting
Reports available to advisers and investors (where sanctioned by the adviser) will depend on the sensitivity of the portfolio manager, and whether they wish to allow their portfolios to be viewed on a daily basis. If daily online viewing is allowed, then all valuation, asset allocation, taxation, transaction, income and expense reports will be available via APA's SMART Portfolio Solutions any time. If daily online viewing is not allowed by the manager, then investors will have daily updated online access to the total value of their portfolio, along with a financial-year to- date summary of realised and unrealised capital gains and income. Investors will also be emailed a quarterly statement of their individual portfolio holdings, a portfolio expenses report, and a financial year-to date tax summary. On an annual basis, all investors will receive an end of financial year tax statement summary.
- Competitive Fees
The administrative fee for this service is extremely competitive as clients will not be charged any additional fees to have their SMA holdings integrated into APA's SMART Portfolio Solutions.
Tricom's Business Development Manager, Bill McConnell, said that Tricom were delighted to have formed this relationship with APA, and that the combined service offered the market an extremely sophisticated, powerful, flexible and affordable SMA service to Program Managers and Dealers. "We believe that this joint service offering will be the precursor to a number of leading edge joint financial services offerings between APA and ourselves that will be developed in the near future".
APA's Managing Director, Paul Malcolm, said that APA has a strategy to partner with technologically advanced and professional financial services and product providers in the delivery of sophisticated investment portfolio solutions.
"The Tricom/APA SMA service matches Tricom's extensive Australian and international financial markets expertise with APA's SMART Portfolio Solution. The process of collaboration with Tricom has been ideal due to our complementary skillsets and Tricom's extremely professional approach. We believe that Tricom's choice of APA as the strategic partner for their wholesale SMA model is a confirmation of our position as a leader in the Australian investment reporting and portfolio market. We look forward to a very long relationship with Tricom."
He said "It is also important to acknowledge that the initial introduction to and negotiations with Tricom were facilitated by the Pharos Financial Group Pty Ltd ("Pharos") with whom we have a successful strategic alliance. We have worked extremely closely with Pharos since our ASX listing and this agreement with Tricom is the first public confirmation of the quality of their institutional contacts. We have been working hard for a long time on the completion of a number of significant system functionality enhancements, and this is also the first of a number that that we will be very soon bringing to the market that we believe will substantially grow FUA and the number of portfolios and investments administered by our administration service."
