BGL Corporate’s cloud SMSF administration solution, Simple Fund 360, is undergoing testing and client authorisation for data services before its scheduled beta release in July.
“It’s all moving along pretty well according to schedule. The routine to upgrade to the desktop to the web is all complete and we’re just going through final testing of that at the moment,” BGL managing director Ron Lesh told selfmanagedsuper.
“At some stage in July … we’ll be running a closed beta for a couple of months with about 30 clients and 1000 funds. Then we’ll have a full release a couple of months later, possibly mid-October.”
BGL had received commitment from about 25,000 funds to use the web solution once it moved out of the closed beta period.
“If everything goes according to schedule, by the middle of next year we expect to have somewhere between 50,000 and 75,000 funds on Simple Fund 360,” Lesh said.
“What we’re working on with clients right now is to sign them up for all the data services around Simple Fund 360 – the bank account service, for the contract notes and the registry data because once we move from the desktop to the web version, all of that goes with the migration.”
He said BGL had employed nine people in its transition team, as he believed that stage of the project would take some time.
Over 4000 bank accounts were signed up in the past month.
BGL’s update seminars in July will include a preview of Simple Fund 360 for clients.
“Simple Fund 360 is a progression. We’ve had the desktop offering for a long time and we’ve had the portal for three, four years now. A number of our clients wanted a full web product and the whole world is moving toward cloud computing, so we’ve got to provide that choice so our clients can use the web product, they can stay on the desktop or use a combination of both,” Lesh said.
“What we’re finding is the processing of SMSFs is also becoming a lot more spread out, so in the past it was already in the office and now people want to be able to do that anywhere.”
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