‘It’s very hard’: OneVue speaks on SMSF admin exit
OneVue won’t be directly investing any further into the SMSF admin market, finding it “tough” to come up against increasing consolidation and ongoing, significant technology investment.
Following the sale of its SMSF admin business to SuperConcepts, the only SMSF admin services OneVue will provide are those bundled into its platform offerings.
For OneVue, complexity and market consolidation are key factors making SMSF administration a difficult sector to compete in, according to chief executive Connie Mckeage.
“I think the whole SMSF space has become much more complex. Unless you do it day in and day out… you can’t stay on top of everything,” Ms Mckeage told SMSF Adviser.
“Obviously we have a [good] business in SMSFs, and even then we are nowhere near the size of AMP. I don’t think we could have a strategic advantage,” she said.
Ms Mckeage also fears “the things we can’t see” in SMSF administration, like lurking threats of cyber security.
“We spent a lot of money trying to make sure that we have the latest technology to be able to monitor… but when you are running a large scale admin business, client data is everything,” Ms Mckeage said.
“Whether it’s something like Facebook with the pressure they’re under now, or what’s happening with other large firms that have gone from peacock to feather duster overnight because of client data,” she said.
OneVue recently acquired KPMG’s superannuation administration business, as part of a broader strategy to divest service lines not performing at full steam.
“The bigger picture is that we are looking at all of our business lines and if we don’t think we have a strategic advantage and we can scale profitably, then we are divesting it, and if we think that we have got a core business capability that we can scale, then we will acquire,” she said.
