The recent trend of experiencing either stagnant or negative fund flows has been defied by two platform providers in the market, with OneVue enjoying 18 consecutive months of positive net inflow and Linear Asset Management announcing a $2-billion rise in its funds under administration (FUA).
OneVue has attributed its result to the transitioning of more client accounts over to its unified managed account (UMA) platform within existing affiliated adviser groups in conjunction with a significant amount of new adviser registrations over the past 18 months.
"The overall platform market fell $5.8 billion in funds under management in the year to June 2012, according to the [Plan for Life] report, while the OneVue UMA bucked that trend and increased market share, with a record September quarter," OneVue head of sales Stephen Karrasch said.
"While some would claim that a growing number of advisers are happy to align themselves with services provided by the major banks and institutions, many advisers are happy with what we as an independent company provide."
Karrasch identified the ability to give clients a wider choice of investments as a key element to OneVue's recent success.
"Providing clients with more options supports the introduction of a statutory fiduciary duty whereby financial advisers must act in the best interests of their clients as proposed under the Future of Financial Advice reforms," he said.
Linear Asset Management's result takes its total FUA to just under $3 billion.
It earmarked innovation as a critical factor to the fund flow improvement.
"Particularly pleasing is the ability of our staff and systems to cope with such large transitions whilst still being able to deliver new functionality and product innovation through our web-based portal," Linear managing director Chris Hipkin said.
An example of Linear's innovation was the ability to service complex investments such as allocations to direct international securities, Hipkin said.
"We operate in most major markets across more than 10 currencies and can deal in a wide range of assets," he said.
"Our web-based portal now provides advisers with a truly innovative platform which now includes practice management solutions for CRM (customer relationship management), workflow, case management, and SOA (statement of advice) production."
