A new adviser investment platform has launched, allowing advisers to service their clients online while finishing off the advice process in person.
JustFA aims to make financial advice more affordable by providing advisers with back office and investment platform technology, designed to support the advice process from start to finish.
But JustFA is not a robo-adviser, according to Debbie Dry, head of business development, who explained that unlike robo-platforms, the platform provides advice firms with tools to deliver their services to clients.
“Though a number of processes are automated and the clients can provide a lot of details online, it is the advisers who finalise the fact-finding and the risk profiling of the client, provide detailed recommendations and ongoing service,” she said.
“In this respect, JustFA is fully aligned with the traditional advisory industry and has little in common with the robo-advice model, beyond having a technological base”.
Advice firms receive the tools to set up services and set their fees for their clients, including one-off and ongoing fees. The fees are then collected by JustFA from the client accounts.
Charges are 0.25 per cent of the client’s assets held on the platform and 0.25 per cent of client assets held in JustFA portfolios for the managed portfolio service. There are additional charges for self-invested personal pension accounts.
Dry said the firm was engaged with a number of advice firms, which were at various stages of their journey from an initial discussion through demos and due diligence to the onboarding.
The platform is part of the Fusion Group which provided initial capital for its development and last year, it completed its second round of funding.
It has partnered with Seccl, the Octopus-owned platform technology provider, which provides custody and investment platform functionality.
Dry said the business came about after seeing regulation raise the cost of providing advice.
“Inadvertently, they have limited the ability of financial advisers to provide affordable services to their clients,” she said.
“Millions of people today cannot afford to pay for financial advice, much as they would like to.
“The advice firms find it unprofitable and a compliance risk to service the next generation of clients or to attract the next generation of advisers.”
The firm said JustFA was a way to bridge the advice gap by making the advice process more convenient and affordable.
Dry explained JustFA's technology created efficiencies across the advice process thus cutting the cost of servicing clients.
“It also enables young advisers to cut their teeth on lower-value and younger clients – from their peer group perhaps – who will in turn become the wealth management clients of the future,” she said.
sonia.rach@ft.com
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