Astute partnership with FinSwitch to benefit financial services consumers

Astute FSE - the company that assimilates information online from life insurance, disability and investment product providers for use by advisers undertaking financial planning for clients - has announced a new interface with FinSwitch that will increase significantly the number of investment companies with a presence on the Astute platform.

FinSwitch is focused on moving data between parties in the collective investment industry, providing a common automated platform to process transactions and other data between members of the industry. Clients include unit trust management companies and ‘bulked Investors’ like Linked Investment Service Providers (LISPs).

Said Astute Managing Director, Biddie Biddulph (pictured): “The significance of the partnership for providers is that their products will be more easily accessible to the 19 000 financial advisers that use our platform.

“For advisers, the inclusion on Astute of a broader range of investment product options brings greater efficiencies, cost savings and professionalism to their financial planning capabilities. As a result the customers of the financial services industry are the ultimate beneficiaries.”

Because of the wide range of investment companies already connected to the FinSwitch platform, these product providers will now also become available on Astute for the provision of client portfolio data that advisers need for proper financial needs analysis and planning.

The initial investment companies that will provide portfolio data to Astute via FinSwitch include Investec, Coronation, Prudential and Nedgroup. Data will be provided only to the financial adviser on record at the investment company for the specific client he or she is requesting information for.

Astute and FinSwitch have also agreed to a new protocol for integration of their systems. They will use Microsoft WebServices, regarded as the state-of-the-art, secure integration mechanism that operates via the Internet.

On the benefits to the industry of the FinSwitch platform, Managing Director Tim Holmes commented: “We are very pleased to be in partnership with Astute as the predominant provider of client portfolio information to financial advisers in South Africa.

“The partnership brings significant economies of scale benefits for our members and is consistent with our objective to reduce operational risk and increase efficiency in the collective investment schemes industry. We do this by building automated platforms for the delivery of common market related data and the processing of transactions.”