WealthO2 to offer complete tech solution to financial planners

Wealth02's ambitious goal to become a complete tech solution for financial planners could become a reality this year, even with the recent departure of chief executive officer Shannon Bernasconi.

"We want to be the first to market to provide an end-to-end [tech] solution to financial planners," Andrew Whelan, acting chief executive officer of WealthO2, told Industry Moves.

"From the online fact-find, through to establishing goals, through to digital SOAs, then capturing the authority to proceed and then transfer that data, triggering rollovers automatically from their software."

The first test integration is due to run by the end of September, with the potential for the solution to be available more broadly from early next year if the pilot goes well.

"We have been talking about this for years and I think the industry has been talking about this for years," Whelan said.

The use and availability of open APIs (application programing interfaces) and the right partners has assisted WealthO2 to be able to develop their solution for financial planners.

WealthO2 is expanding at a rapid pace and is currently on the look out for "at least" six extra personal to build out its help desk, asset transition team and business development team.

It recently announced a structured pilot program with Ord Minnett for their ultra high net wealth managed discretionary account offering. Ord Minett will pilot WealthO2's portfolio rebalancing and portfolio modelling software for those clientele.

"So we've been talking to Ord for a while. They have a really strong good business there with lost of clients," Whelan said.

In total, WealthO2 has 94 Australian Financial Service Licensees (AFSLs) signed up to their software solutions which all use it in a variety of ways.

Whelan says the biggest challenge in terms of implementing their solution is often the complexity of doing it over HIN (holder identification number), where the assets are held in the name of the individual, rather than the custodial model. Although they plan to offer both models on their platform later this year.

"With the Ord's one in particular we're going to have to integrate seamlessly into their environment," he says.

WealthO2 recently announced the departure of CEO Shannon Bernasconi, who had been with the group since 2015, and the appointment of Class Super founder, Richard Barber, and John Griffiths of Nimit Capital Partners to the board.