John Billington
Viewpoint with John Billington

by John Billington
General Manager
IOOF Portfolio Solutions

Welcome to the May Edition of @dviser Magazine.

A few weeks ago our Pursuit platform moved past the $1 billion FUA mark…

We all had a sense of déjà vu over here.

“Didn’t this happen last year?” we wondered.

Actually it did. In the first half of 2008 – just 18 months after launch – Pursuit smashed through the $1 billion milestone. It was an incredible result achieved with a great product and incredible support from advisers.

Swept away by the markets

Unfortunately, just as soon as we had hit $1 billion, the global financial markets plummeted (further) and cut our celebrations short. Despite consistently positive net flows throughout the global financial crisis, Pursuit’s FUA was pulled back into the nine-hundreds by some of the sharpest market falls in history.

To a large extent a milestone is just a number, but significant points like $1 billion do give us the opportunity to take stock, to look at how far we’ve come and to thank the many people that have made the milestone possible.

That’s why - now that we’re back over $1 billion - we’d like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank all of you who have supported our product during the early years. Advisers have had a big hand in shaping our product (through consultations and voluntary feedback) and so it’s been fantastic to see that we’ve delivered a product that meets your needs as well as those of your clients.

We will continue to enhance our offering

The task remains however, to now keep building and improving Pursuit so that new milestones can be reached.

We launched Pursuit in late 2006, and an enormous amount of research, planning and effort went into it beforehand. But we knew then that the product development didn’t stop there.

Every year advisers and clients develop new needs, legislation changes, technology moves on. Anyone who stands still is left behind. Since 2006 we’ve constantly added features and improved our platform.

Your feedback will continue to help us develop Pursuit

In the past six months alone we’ve added a range of new features to Pursuit, including online switching, a broader investment menu, online insurance, a protected cash investment option and massively improved (and shortened) disclosure documents.

We intend to keep building and improving Pursuit, and to reach many more big milestones. Your feedback, as always, will be key in helping to guide our resources and to deliver the most useful enhancements. We are all extremely positive about the next era for Pursuit, where with your help, we will continue to rise to new heights.

We hope you enjoy reading this month’s @dviser magazine. Please feel free to contact me with your queries. Alternatively, you could phone or email your Business Development Manager, or call Adviser Services on 1800 659 634.

Kind regards,

John Billington

Important note:

Please remember to get all super contributions in before the 30 June cut-off to take advantage of the $50,000 and $100,000 concessional contributions caps before they are halved from 1 July 2009.

Click here for more details about making these contributions, including the IOOF administration deadlines.