Financial services company Sealcorp is planning to hire an extra 45 technology staff in Perth, reinforcing its position as one of the biggest systems development houses in Western Australia.
Financial services company Sealcorp is planning to hire an extra 45 technology staff in Perth, reinforcing its position as one of the biggest systems development houses in Western Australia.
The extra staff are being hired to help manage the transfer of Advance Asset Management’s $6 billion in funds under management to Sealcorp’s administration platform.
Sealcorp and Advance are part of the St George Bank group, and the transfer will lift Sealcorp’s ranking among fund administrators.
The transfer is one part of Sealcorp’s new strategic plan, which involves a range of measures to diversify and expand the business.
Sydney-based chief executive Geoff Lloyd said Sealcorp had achieved strong growth over the past three years, mainly through its ASGARD master trust platform, which had increased funds under administration by 57 per cent to $22 billion.
He said the Securitor financial adviser dealer group had also achieved growth.
“Our strategy is not only to continue to capitalise on the success of our ASGARD platform but also focus on growth by diversifying more of the business into advice support services for financial advisers,” Mr Lloyd said.
The extra technology staff being recruited by Sealcorp would be in addition to the 110 technology staff the firm currently employs at its operational base in Perth.
Mr Lloyd said the main tasks for the new staff would be data migration and the development of new functionality for the ASGARD platform.
The company’s director, operations and IT, Jan Kolbusz, said Sealcorp typically spent more than $10 million per year on new IT developments, on top of its recurring IT spend.
He said Advance selected Sealcorp because “they could leverage the functionality of our platform”.
He said Sealcorp would provide all systems, adminstration and call centre functions for Advance.
Sealcorp’s strategy review has highlighted some of the defining trends in the financial advisory and funds management industries.
Mr Lloyd said the top five administration platforms – National Australia Bank is number one with $44 billion under administration and Sealcorp is number five with $22 billion – accounted for 57 per cent of the market, while the top 10 accounted for 85 per cent.
He said the big platforms also accounted for most of the growth in the past year.
Market research found that financial advisers were using more administration platforms (master trusts or wraps), with the average adviser using 1.5 platforms in 2002 and 2.5 this year.
Sealcorp has contributed to this trend by having three platforms, following the launch of its eWrap service and its Elements master trust.
Not surprisingly, there has been a corresponding drop in the average use of direct managed funds.
The big dealer groups are not as dominant as the big administration platforms.
The top 10 (including AMP at number one and Securitor at number nine) accounted for 50 per cent of the market held by the top 100 firms.
While Securitor is a major dealer group with 431 advisers, it provides services to another 380 advisers who operate under their own licence, including 100 advisers in St George Financial Planning.
Mr Lloyd said he wanted to expand the aligned dealer groups.
He said market research indicated financial advisers were mostly happy with their administration platforms but were not satisfied with planning software and ideally wanted an integrated solution.
Sealcorp’s practice management software adviserNET ranked second in terms of market share after IWL’s Visiplan software. Mr Lloyd said his aim was to enhance adviserNET so that it met planners’ aspirations.
