On 1 November 2012 the federal government passed legislation to allow Commonwealth government securities (CGS) to be traded on the retail market, rather than solely by institutional investors, which was previously the case.
“It’s important that investors have this choice of investment options and therefore you need an asset administration system to support them,” Bravura head of portfolio solutions Darren Speirs told InvestorDaily.
“No matter what asset type an SMSF or retail investor chooses to go into, we can actually handle them.”
In addition, Speirs said investment administrators and platform providers catering to the retail market, particularly those servicing the self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) sector, would need to ensure their software could support a broad range of assets, including CGS.
Speirs said it was difficult for platforms to offer a full range of investment options, given it was limited to the discretion of the product provider and what the end investor chose.
“Wrap platforms don’t tend to have a restricted list of investments that they’ll allow and they are broadening them all the time so I believe they’ll be able to cater to these [assets] quite rapidly,” he said, adding that it was the larger legacy platforms that were still challenged by complicated technology and structure, which negated their ability to add new functionality for asset classes.
“Absolutely, that is a major challenge for platforms. The more flexible the system is, the better the architecture is and the [easier it is] to provide more asset coverage more quickly.”
Bravura had a number of interfaces that enabled it to tackle complicated integrations into platform architecture all the time, Speirs said.
Garradin was a comprehensive, multicurrency investment management system with integrated asset management, registry and tax management functions. It was a single, fully modular system that could be deployed across multiple sectors.
Speirs told InvestorDaily that Bravura will launch an SMSF solution, leveraged off Garradin’s functionality, in the very near future.
