Class Limited (ASX: CL1), the leading Australian wealth accounting technology business, has launched an industry-first trust cloud accounting and administration product, Class Trust.
Today, there are more than 1 million trusts in Australia, including 530,000 investment trusts making them the second largest investment vehicle after super. Leveraging the expertise in SMSF administration, Class Trust brings Class’ market-leading automation and integration capability to this growing space of discretionary (family) and unit trusts.
Class led a customer-centric research approach in the development of the product – including a closed pilot with more than 30 accounting practices – to address the typically complex and time-consuming process of administering different types of trusts.
Some of the data and customer feedback from the pilot showed:
- Jobs could be processed in 50% of the time
- An average saving of 3 hours per trust
- In one pilot case, an estimated 17 hours of processing time was saved.
Class Trust enables accountants, financial advisers, and administration professionals to automate significant parts of the trust administration process, making it more efficient for practices to navigate the typically disjointed and error-prone process. Using comprehensive data feeds connected directly to leading financial institutions, and automated tax accounting reconciliation, an accountant can use the full Class product suite across the trust life cycle, from deed establishment and management, through to closing a trust.
Integrated with Class’ market-leading product suite, Class Super and Class Portfolio – and bolstered by the capabilities of recent acquisitions NowInfinity and Smartcorp – Class Trust delivers a genuine trust solution for accounting professionals. Class continues to innovate and invest in the development of its multi-product technology and is focused on remaining the platinum standard of back office automation for the Australian accounting industry.
Class is midway through its three-year Reimagination strategy and is currently in its Accelerate phase.
“Class has listened to our customers’ wish to simplify and automate the complexity of trust administration,” Class CEO, Andrew Russell, said. “Class software product expertise is solving customer pain points through complex rule-based coding. The launch of Class Trust is a natural extension of our product suite for our customers.
“As we have seen through our in-depth customer research, managing trusts is complex and while we have used the components of the Class engine, our Trust product has been designed and built to address the specific challenges we know exist for professionals that administer trusts.
“Our work with customers and partners through our pilot phase, in addition to our strategic acquisitions in the legal documentation space this year, have enabled us to create this dedicated trust accounting solution.”
Class research showed that Excel is still one of the primary tools for trust administration, while obtaining information and source documentation as well as reconciling capital gains and income were key pain points. Class Trust solves these pain points.
Class’ NowInfinity platform is already the most popular trust documentation provider and its functionality will be available to Class Trust users from within the Class product suite.
Class partners with more than 3,500 firms of accountants, advisers, and administrators Australia-wide. Class’ award-winning solutions continue to help drive positive changes across accounting businesses and SMSF administrators by boosting productivity, improving client service levels, sand helping businesses deliver high-impact results.
Class Trust is now available. You can visit the Class Trust website here.
