Profitable Netwealth backs technology and rise and rise of IFAs

Mike Taylor

Managing Editor and Publisher

25 August 2022

Leading platform Netwealth is looking to the continuing rise and rise of independent financial advisers to maintain its growth momentum after announcing a statutory net profit after tax of $55.6 million on the back of strong revenue growth.

The company reported that funds under administration at 30 June stood at $55.7 billion – an increase of $8.5 billion.

Importantly, it said client accounts stood at 115,642 and that 3,327 financial intermediaries are using the platform.

The company’s announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) said that it was continuing to focus on revenue diversification and that it expected that its inflows would benefit from ongoing industry consolidation and change.

“Netwealth expects to benefit from growth in its affluent high net worth and private wealth groups as its platform functionality supports and enables the unique and differentiated needs of the segment,” ti said.

It said its pipeline and win rate for new business remained very strong across all key market segments including mid-market and small institutions with a number of large endowment funds and trusts transitioning to the Netwealth platform.

The ASX release noted that Netwealth had recently agreed to provide growth funding of up to $2.5 million to Xeppo to accelerate the firm’s ongoing development and expansion of data analytics and business management platform which aligned to Netwealth’s ‘Whole of Wealth’ strategy.

“We intend to unlock and leverage data for advisers, licensees and model managers to provide them with new insights to identify opportunities, drive their efficiency and expand our client portal for advisers to improve interaction with clients,” it said.

The ASX announcement noted that Netwealth founder Michael Heine would be stepping back from his co-chief executive role with Matthew Heine and would become an executive director.