ANZ in balancing act over wealth platforms
It was announced earlier this week that ANZ's global wealth leadership, after a review of the group's platforms business, had decided to look at the "strategic options" available for managing the delivery of its wrap platforms. The two key wrap platforms in use are PortfolioOne and Oasis, with combined funds under management of A$8.3 million."We are currently conducting a review of the market to understand the options that are available for the future delivery of our wrap solutions. At this stage no decisions have been made," said an ANZ spokesperson.The spokesperson added that the bank intended to continue running both forms of investment advisory platforms, and had "taken input" from advisers along with comments from proponents of its master trust platforms, OneAnswer and Smart Choice, where it remains business as usual.While the bank has been understandably coy about the exact choices it has narrowed down to, one option that is sure to be on the table is a sale and leaseback arrangement. As the AFR notes, [http://www.afr.com/Page/Uuid/06120d9e-3e36-11e4-91ab-28ef03d279d4] there is a ready-made model for ANZ's leadership: last year the bank sold Super Concepts, which provides accounting, tax and compliance services for self-managed superannuation funds, to Super IQ, a business 49 per cent owned by AMP. In return, Super IQ provides its self-managed fund administration platform to ANZ through a white-labelling agreement.The expanded use of technology has been also been long identified as one of the core strategies of ANZ's wealth management division. A little over a year ago, Joyce Phillips, chief executive of global wealth, was showcasing how IBM's supercomputer "'Watson" could use "cognitive computing systems" to work as "a virtual customer services assistant", providing answers in a conversational way.ANZ believes a reshuffle along those lines, if implemented, would free it up to expand the quality of technological responses the group can offer to many "self-directed" retail customers, who are only looking for basic, affordable (ie, cheap) wealth management advice.