Coin Financial Planning Software and Olicc Technologies today announced that Coin has purchased 50 per cent of Olicc, providing a strong relationship focused on the delivery of market leading system solutions to financial advisers.
The arrangement means Olicc and Coin will work closely together to provide financial advisers with back-office software solutions that will allow them to track and manage their business, allowing them to spend more time dealing with their clients. It is about helping advisers to build better businesses.
Olicc provides back office software solutions to the Financial Planning marketplace, with its core product being Comtrac, a practice management system The system provides advisers with pipeline reporting, allows them to validate upfront/trail brokerage and gives them insight into the numbers behind their business. Comtrac is a simple and unique solution, and rapid uptake of the product since it was released into the market place in 2004 has seen enormous growth for the Olicc business.
The injection of capital from the Coin equity buy in will enable Olicc's growth to continue, along with an increase in the development and support functions of the business to provide advisers with an evolving system.
Olicc founders Cliff Garrels and Daniel Fitzgerald will continue to drive the business forward in their current roles of Managing Director and Development Director respectively.
Coin Financial Planning Software Managing Director Tony Graham said that advisers were now focusing less on compliance given that they have bedded down their processes in this area and there was now a shift to advisers concentrating on managing their businesses.
"Coin's approach to business has always been to build the functionality ourselves except where there is already a market leading solution. Coin believes that Olicc provides an excellent product which allows advisers to see where their revenue is coming from and to track new business and to work out how the business is currently paying its expenses," Mr Graham said.
"We have recently had a growing number of requests from our clients where they have wanted to build a practice management component into their daily business so they can start actively managing their revenue flow and their succession planning.
"This relationship with Olicc will provide both partners with the ability to grow and provide a better service to our clients. It will allow Coin to leverage off the practice management expertise of Olicc's principles who are already considered to be the providers of a market leading solution.
"We believe that while this product has been an outstanding tool for a number of individual practices, there is significant scope for it to have serious positive implications for larger financial planning groups and institutions."
Olicc Managing Director, Cliff Garrels said financial planning practitioners, licensees and institutions were all progressing to take a greater focus on revenue management and practice reporting and Olicc will continue to be a leader in the provision of solutions in this space.
"Olicc will remain a provider that supports practice management regardless of the front-end application that is used by a practice. Olicc remains open to building architecture that supports links with any front or back-end application. The use of the EPI Data Standards will greatly assist in this flow of data." Mr Garrels said.
Olicc should not be considered as being -included' in the Coin package. The businesses will be working closely together to assess integration opportunities across the two systems. Olicc will continue to be active in other markets, including General Insurance.
