AMP platforms soar, SMSFs dawdleBY JAMES FERNYHOUGH | FRIDAY, 25 OCT 2013 11:40AMCashflow through AMP's platforms has more than doubled over the last year, according to figures released from the September quarter. Related News |
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David Sharpe
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FINANCIAL ADVICE ASSOCIATION AUSTRALIA
FINANCIAL ADVICE ASSOCIATION AUSTRALIA
A family man, business owner, cricket fanatic and financial adviser, David Sharpe has many facets. One of his biggest legacies, as he steps down as chair of the Financial Advice Association Australia, is leaving the profession stronger than he found it.







The failure of AMP to gain any traction in the SMSF space was fairly easy to predict. You would have thought that AMP might have learned from the follies of Perpetual (SmartSuper acquisition) and ING/ANZ (Super Concepts acquisition) into the SMSF administration space.
These institutions fail to understand the basic mindset of SMSF trustees. That is the trustees want control, they are happy to deal with advisers but are not interested in a tailored off the shelf offering. Trustees are more interested in service & result and less interested in the technolgy.
Ah technology it will save us all. The data feeds, the bells & whistles, the data feeds, the ipad/iphone apps the data feeds are good in theory but very few trustees will take the time to utilise these tools. They are simply a sales & marketing ploy to differentiate the AMP SMSF offering from the standard offerings in the market. One wonders whether any research was undertaken before millions were spent on developing these toys.
So the gain in funds (excluding publicised acquistions) is about 150 per quarter. 700 for last 12 months. Hardly a great return for the money spent on the advertising campaign. Heads should rolling at AMP about now.