Sage Online - a great wrap account alternative
We are very pleased to announce the introduction of Sage Online for our Self Managed Super Fund (SMSF) clients.
As a trustee of a SMSF it can be very hard to keep track of a diversified investment portfolio.
Sage Online allows you to check daily balances of all your investments, access performance reports and it provides all the required information for preparation of financial statements and tax returns. Clients will be able to access Sage Online via our website: www.sageadvisers.com.au
A secure login password will be provided to clients on establishment of their account.
Sage Online:
- Provides online data feeds of transaction data from participating banks, fund managers and stock brokers
- Renders obsolete the need to provide bank statements, dividend slips, share purchase & sale details and fund manager transaction data
- Provides automatic daily unit pricing for both managed investments and shares
- Uploads data and wherever possible matches transaction data and posts the transactions to the relevant account
- Provides online reporting allowing you to view super fund information updated daily. SMSF trustees can base investment decisions on current data rather than historical reports for previous periods
- Allows SMSF trustees to become more active and gain a better understanding of investing.
What are the costs?
There is an annual licence fee of $275 per fund for our clients.
How does this compare to other options available to our clients? Wrap accounts offer similar functionality except they don’t provide the software to prepare the accounts and income tax return.
Most financial planners and advisers use these wrap accounts for their clients however we have always considered them to be way too expensive for the benefits they provide and hence we have never used them.
Wrap accounts are charged on a sliding scale of the funds under management (FUM) basis. We have compared the Asgard, BT & IOOF wrap fees so you have some idea of their annual costs.
FUM ASGARD BT IOOF
$100,000 $820 $943 $950
$250,000 $1,742 $1,768 $1,775
$500,000 $2,511 $2,893 $3,150
$750,000 $3,280 $3,768 $3,150
$1,000,000 $3,536 $4,393 $3,150
$1,500,000 $4,048 $4,893 $3,150
An advantage wrap accounts have always enjoyed is online processing of managed fund acquisitions & sales and the attendant elimination of paperwork. This advantage will be removed once the ASX completes the introduction of its new system called Aqua which will allow managed funds to be bought and sold initially via Bell Direct and later CommSec and E*Trade. Our clients will have full access to Aqua via their discount broker.
We think high cost wrap account fees will soon be a thing of the past.
We look forward to be able to offer Sage Online in the future to Trusts, Companies and Individuals. This is in the development pipeline. For now we can offer this service to our SMSF clients and we are very excited about that!
