Garraway Capital Management has set up a discretionary fund management (DFM) platform in a bid to help IFAs lessen their regulatory burden and allow them to refocus their time on servicing clients.
Powered by digital wealth management provider Fundment, the platform uses Garraway’s fund management capabilities and “simplifies” account management for financial advisers.
Its digital onboarding technology allows the process to be “completed within minutes rather than days”, the firm says; which will save advisers valuable time, allowing them to focus more on providing advice and guidance to clients.
There will be eight risk-graded portfolios, managed by a team led by Mark Harris, who joined the firm in 2019 from City Financial.
Joining Harris on the team is Pushpanshu Prakash as senior investment analyst and Simon Newell as alternative funds specialist.
Handling wealth transfer
Hiren Patel, managing director of Garraway, said: “Despite the global disruption caused by covid-19, it’s business as usual for Garraway.”
He said the combination of the two businesses “will enable advisers to significantly modernise their offerings”.
“This allows them to position themselves for the next generation of clients, with the onset of the transgenerational wealth transfer, without giving up control of their businesses.”
Details
The DFM platform has an all-in fee for its active investment solution which comes to 0.99% and this takes into account the service, fund charges, tax wrappers, platform costs and VAT.
It can be white-labelled and tailored to meet individual adviser needs and those of their clients.
IFAs are able to onboard clients and transfer any existing investments, including tax wrappers, to the platform; as well as choose from an actively managed range of model portfolios.
The platform has a number of features including:
- Automated execution and daily rebalancing;
- A mobile app and online portal for advisers and their clients; and,
- Onboarding and top-up facilities for tax wrappers; including pensions, general investment accounts, Isas, offshore bonds and trusts.
Acquisition
On other industry news, retirement solutions provider and IT outsource partner Dunstan Thomas has acquired investment platform consultancy firm Platform Action.
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
This move is part of Dunstan Thomas’ growth plan to expand deeper into the wealth management and investment platform markets, as well as geographically in South Africa and beyond.
Dunstan Thomas has partnered with Platform Action on a range of IT projects over the last decade, working collaboratively with them to support platform clients including; Aegon, Just, StanLib, Novia, Fusion Wealth and Liberty Group.
Ambition
Chris Read, group chief executive of Dunstan Thomas, said: “Platform Action brings a terrific combination of top-flight strategic IT expertise as well as broad delivery capability and very deep platform domain expertise.
“You name the platform; they’ve worked with them on a huge range of technology delivery and consulting projects.
“By working more closely together, we can be more ambitious about bidding for larger IT projects.
“It gives us a wider canvas on which to paint, while enabling faster penetration into the wealth management market at home and abroad.”
