End of the road for Six Park as robo-adviser decides to call it quits
A robo-advice platform once backed by founding members of the Future Fund has ceased services citing challenging capital markets and a lack of industry interest in offering digital investment services.
Melbourne-based investment platform Six Park was launched in 2016 as a response to the “costly and conflicted advice”. It aimed to be a partner offering to traditional advice services, offering investment solutions to novice investors before they turned to in-person, human advice.
As of July, the investing platform offered 10 portfolios, five of which were marketed as sustainable, with investments across eight asset classes including Australian and international shares, infrastructure, bonds and property. Investors could take an assessment which would take in their risk profile, goals and timeframe, before being recommended a portfolio.
Six Park CEO Patrick Garrett. Craig Sillitoe
In a statement released on Friday afternoon, Six Park said that as it grew, it came to believe that the best way to help as many Australians as possible was to partner with midsize wealth, advice and financial services firms to expand its potential audience. However, growth lagged expectations, and goals of ultimately partnering with larger financial institutions such as banks did not materialise.
“Whilst we have established several strong B2B partnerships, we have not seen a broad enough interest and adoption of digital investment services that can help solve for the mass market need for accessible and affordable advice,” the statement said. “Whilst this adoption has successfully occurred overseas, it has yet to happen at similar levels here in Australia.”
The statement said Six Park’s attempts to achieve scale were reliant on accessing suitable funding and a “measure of industry transformation, awareness and adoption to grow business activity to a sustainable level”.
It also noted that the closure comes amid “challenging” capital markets and “despite positive rhetoric” flowing from fellow industry participants.
Six Park investments are all beneficially owned by their customers, and are not at risk of access as the platform closes, it added in the statement.
“The company has provisioned resources and time after [July 28] to allow for an orderly termination of the service and enable clients to elect how they
may wish to transition and manage their assets going forward.”
Six Park chief executive Patrick Garrett said the closure follows a shifting regulatory backdrop that he believes made the large banks and financial services giants hesitant to take on new risk. “For us to grow and scale meaningfully would require a fair bit of capital on our own, and the private funding market is, in my opinion fairly risk averse in this arena,” he said.
Introducing your Newsfeed
Follow the topics, people and companies that matter to you.
Find out moreRead More
Latest In Investing
Fetching latest articles