Dover signs with Midwinter for advice expansion

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Dover Financial Advisers has signed with financial software provider Midwinter and will roll out the latter’s cloud-based platform Advice OS in an effort to widen its advice offering.

Dover Financial Advisers has signed with financial software provider Midwinter and will roll out the latter’s cloud-based platform Advice OS in an effort to widen its advice offering.

The move sees Midwinter centralise the billing of its Advice OS platform, as well as negotiating a value price point for Advice OS users within the Dover network.

Currently, Dover’s planning franchise oversees 131 practices nationwide and encompasses over 230 authorised representatives across Australia.

Adviser manager of Dover Financial Advisers, Peter Thompson, said the partnership will allow prospective and current advisers the “freedom of choice” when it comes to selecting software.

“With adviser numbers continuing to grow, it made sense to centralise billing to get the most competitive pricing possible for our representatives who choose to use Midwinter’s software,” Thompson said.

“The reason we were attracted to Dover is because they are software agnostic; they give the advisers the ability to choose the software that is right for their business,” said Julian Plummer, managing director of Midwinter.

“Historically, we’ve always dealt with advisers [and] we are confident and comfortable in being able to deal with non-mandated situations and allowing customers to have choice.”

Plummer said Midwinter had received “very promising” feedback from advisers regarding its Advice OS platform, as the software provider looks to build on its comprehensive modelling and client relationship management (CRM) capabilities.

“Advice is the currency of this whole industry and so being able to model your client scenarios well and having confidence that you can do best by your clients is crucial under the new FOFA [Future of Financial Advice] legislation,” Plummer said.

“No matter how good your CRM is, unless you’ve got comprehensive modelling and you can compare the different client scenarios and have every strategy at your fingertips, the quality of advice is going to suffer.”