Introduction
A few weeks ago I delivered a keynote presentation to the My Platform Rules conference on the Gold Coast. (An edited version can be viewed here).
Amongst the participants were a number of vendors targeting what has been colloquially called ‘robo-advice’, and it sounds like significant investment is going in to this new sector of the industry.
A couple of weeks later I was having lunch with one of the Mclowd Partners, and was interested to hear that they too were launching a robo-advice service. However because this Partner is building their technology in the Cloud leveraging the Crowd, they intend to make the robo-advice free.
It is a very harsh micro-economic reality, but even before the idea of robo-advice has settled into the lexicon of the asset management industry, prices have fallen to marginal cost (that is $0.00).
Accounting Platform Update
Version 3.4 will be live next week, including the following new features:
- Bank data feeds
- Support for capital returns
- Improved support for assets denominated in foreign currencies
As always detailed Release Notes will be available on the website, and we have now also published a System Status page which provides the Community with real-time transparency as to the status of our cloud infrastructure.
Channel Migration
$250 million in assets are now being managed by the Mclowd Community (and more importantly an SMSF practitioner joins on average every 48 hours).
While migration amongst Channel Partners has been constrained by the absence of functions such as bank data feeds and ATO integration, over the coming months these gaps will be progressively closed (including integration with Macquarie CMA), and the process of moving SMSF assets out of incumbent platforms will scale up rapidly.
eBook
Mclowd recently published an eBook compilation of blog posts from the last couple of years.
Entitled Digitisaton in the 21st Century: Disruption, diffusion and the journey towards zero marginal cost, the book is available from all major eBook platforms, including Kindle and iBooks.
Postscript
Capitalism – at least in its current form – is dying.
The surgeons standing around the operating table (messrs Draghi, Yellen, Abe, Stevens, et al) have spent the last seven years pumping blood transfusions into the body of capitalism without understanding that the patient was born 200 years ago with a fatal genetic flaw that would inevitably drive us towards zero marginal cost, and in the process trigger a slow (and potentially painful) death.
Eventually they will realise that what they are dealing with is not a body but a corpse, and it is only at that point that the process of mourning can begin.
In the meantime, whether it is Brussels, Washington or Canberra, expect a lot of fireworks as the process of transitioning away from the current paradigm gathers pace.
Kind Regards
Ashley Porter
Managing Director
Mclowd Pty Ltdhttp://mclowd.com/mclowd-newsletter-march-2015/http://mclowd.com/mclowd-newsletter-march-2015/