We have seen enormous developments in financial advice and investment products over the past 25 years and while the advice industry still grapples with regulatory issues, innovation in product development continues to move ahead.
At its core, innovation is the process that improves outcomes; more diversity and choice, easier access, greater control, lower cost, higher returns, improved efficiency and reporting. Overall a better investor experience.
Apart from tech tools, open banking and payment systems, AI and Blockchain, new platforms for accessing ESG investments and so on, other innovations we have seen in product development include managed accounts, which tick all or most of those boxes, and fractional investment that enables people to participate in assets not ordinarily available to them.
Behind most innovations there is a visionary, a person who sees a need or a better way to do things, that broadens or democratises opportunity.
One such person is Arthur Naoumidis, founder of both the Praemium and DomaCom platforms.
Praemium offered an efficient, cost-effective on-line solution to active portfolio management across a diverse range of assets that, up to that time, were not able to be included in most administration systems.
The Praemium platform was identified early on at an institutional level as the foundation for developing managed accounts in Australia and would become a vehicle for retail advisers.
Naoumidis took Praemium’s managed account model to the UK where the earlier style of platform, Wrap accounts, was in the early stages of rolling out. Back in Australia the funds management industry ramped up their managed account offerings behind Praemium.
The DomaCom platform, coming some years later, was Naoumidis solution to a range of issues including but not limited to accessing housing as a “shared” investment, ultimately enabling SMSFs to invest in residential property where related parties were tenants. This offered a solution to the youth housing crisis which was emerging and has since spiralled to a critical point.
The fractional model also opened up commercial, agricultural and community based renewable energy projects among other assets that gave investors more choice particularly in areas they felt strongly about.
In 2023 Naoumidis turned his attention to disability housing under the NDIS and created a hybrid model that combines residential with NDIS. The benefit is that most disability housing is built in regional areas ignoring the greater need of urban disabled residents. The higher cost of land acquisition became a barrier to building in cities, but by sharing sites with non-NDIS buyers the cost can be reduced thereby increasing the yield for investors and encouraging investment in this market. Under the management of Specialist Disability Accommodation providers yields for investors are more than double the median yield for normal residential property.
In this his latest innovation, the Aligned Disability Property Fund, Naoumidis solves two problems; better income for investors and more housing for a disadvantaged group.
To grow and eventually become mainstream, innovation needs adviser and investor support and as many hands make light work, as well they minimise risk. It is the private sector that drives progress so we encourage you to look at investment options like the Aligned Disability Property Fund – Home | Aligned Disability Property Fund (aligneddisabilityinvestments.com.au).