Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Bell Financial Group (ASX:BFG) Co-CEO, Arnie Selvarajah
Lel Smits: Bell Financial Group is a diversified financial services and wealth management business and the home of storied stockbroker Bell Potter. Bells has just announced a strategic partnership with Premium to support its growth in wealth management products and services. Premium will provide Bells with custodial and non-custodial administration across a wide range of investments including domestic and international equities, unlisted managed funds, alternatives cash, commodities and fixed income. Bell says this is a significant milestone in its transformation from traditional stockbroker to full-service wealth manager. Bell Financial Group Co-CEO Arnie Selvarajah joins me to discuss the Premium partnership decision, the strategy behind it and what this means for Bell Potters clients.
Arnie, welcome to the Stock Network.
Arnie Selvarajah: Thank you for having me.
Lel Smits: Now, you’ve previously spoken about expanding Bells into wealth management. How does the Premium partnership support this and can you also outline why you’re doing this?
Arnie Selvarajah: Yeah, so we currently have an internal platform where we’ve got about 2,200 portfolios, about $6 billion in fund under advice on a platform and that platform helps us to take a more holistic view with our clients currently.
The assets that are held on that platform at the moment are mainly equities. So the partnership with Premium does two things. One, it allows us to scale up that offering because our current internal platform hasn’t got the capacity to do that but more importantly, Premium has very strong support for all the other asset classes.
So our ability now to advise and record and report on fixed interest product or managed funds and even some of the alts categories of assets or sectors of assets means that now we can be much more holistic in how we talk to our clients and we can address more of their portfolio needs and their financial objectives.
Lel Smits: Wonderful. Now, Bell Financial Group selected Premium Scope Plus after a competitive process. What drove this decision to partner with Premium and also what do you think sets them apart really as the right fit for your clients?
Arnie Selvarajah: Yeah, so we went through quite an extensive process and we actually loaded sample portfolios so we could see what the reports looked like when they came back, how the processing was occurring. We’ve got a stockbroking DNA and heritage so we are very strong on both domestic and global equities. So we had to find a partner that was also strong in the ability to manage, report and monitor equities portfolios alongside all the other asset classes but predominantly, most of our portfolios have a large proportion in equities. So that was the thing that set Premium apart. Premium started from an equities background, that’s how they built their business originally. So their knowledge and experience and expertise in managing equities portfolios was really the differentiator from our perspective.
Lel Smits: Excellent and Arnie, you are onboarding more than 2,200 portfolios to Premium’s administration platform with this partnership. How will this move enhance the experience for your clients, particularly those high net worth investors?
Arnie Selvarajah: Yeah, so it’s never just one thing, is it? So this is part of the process and Premium will really form part of the back-end engine for us. At the same time, we’re building a completely new user interface for our clients which we’ll deliver early next year.
So from a client’s perspective, the back-end engineering and the back-end management of their portfolios won’t be so obvious to them because that’s behind the scenes. What they will see come early next year is how we present those portfolios and the transparency and the engagement they’ll be able to have with our advisors through the new digital layer that we will deliver next year. So there’s that, there’s the addition of the additional product which they will experience obviously and the back-end management and back-office components should be invisible to them, all things being equal.
Lel Smits: Well Arnie, thank you so much for your time outlining this partnership and look forward to watching how it progresses.
Arnie Selvarajah: Thank you and thanks for having me.
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