Ian Dunbar

SuiteBox, the mobile office solution for the financial services industry, has appointed Ian Dunbar as its new CEO.

Mr Dunbar, previously the SuiteBox country manager for Australia, takes over as CEO from co-founder Richard Mannell who will remain with SuiteBox in a newly created COO role to focus on governance and operations., to support the rapid growth of the business.

Mr Dunbar is an experienced financial services executive, having spent 15 years in the UK, Hong Kong and Australia with global banks JPMorgan and UBS. Most recently Mr Dunbar built and ran the investment platform business for UBS and has a deep knowledge of the Australian financial services market.

SuiteBox CEO Ian Dunbar, said, “In the past five months Suitebox has achieved significant take up in Australia and New Zealand with more than 250 financial services firms now using our mobile office solution. We also received global recognition at the KPMG 2016 FinTech Innovation Challenge in London, where we won the Mobile category.

“Financial services professionals, such as financial advisers, mortgage brokers, accountants and insurance providers face challenges on multiple fronts, but we’re convinced that the best businesses will not only survive, but thrive. By embracing technology and innovation financial services professionals have the opportunity to create truly mobile virtual meetings between themselves and their clients and SuiteBox is excited to be at the forefront of delivering mobile office solutions globally.

“The changes reflect the positioning of SuiteBox as a global provider of solutions to the financial services industry. The majority of SuiteBox’s growth has come from Australia, and the business priority for 2016 is to rapidly expand in Australia and take the SuiteBox solution to new markets,” said Mr Dunbar.

The post Suitebox appoints CEO appeared first on AdviserVoice.

Richard Mannell

Auckland and Sydney-based technology company SuiteBox has won global recognition by taking out the Mobile Category in the KPMG Fintech Innovation Challenge, organised by Matchi.

The global challenge aims to source six groundbreaking Fintech innovations, from across the globe, to present to an elite panel of financial institutions in London on February 11th. Participants in the panel include Westpac (Australia), Caixa Bank (Spain), Bank Hapoalim (Israel), Nationwide (UK), Liberty Group (South Africa), AIB (Ireland), Standard Bank (South Africa) and Rabobank (Netherlands).

One winner was selected in each Challenge Category, covering Next Generation Payments, Blockchain, Data/Credit Analytics, Mobility, Cyber Security and Biometrics and Wealth Technology.

SuiteBox provides the user a Virtual Office, allowing participants with any web enabled device to meet via video, record meetings and, share, review and sign documents online. SuiteBox can be used across different industries, but is gaining success in financial services in its target markets, an industry undergoing massive investment in disruptive technologies. SuiteBox is rapidly growing in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa with over 200 companies now using the product, and is currently launching into the UK market.

Richard Mannell, SuiteBox CEO said “we are very proud to have been selected as the winner against stiff global competition. This success is a ringing endorsement of the opportunity for truly mobile virtual meetings between professionals and their clients across many industries. SuiteBox is excited to be at the forefront of delivering mobile office solutions globally”.

The post SuiteBox wins global KPMG Fintech Innovation Challenge appeared first on AdviserVoice.

The new features now enable the SuiteBox online collaboration solution to be used by any financial adviser in Australia and New Zealand including simple meeting set up and the ability for the adviser to view, save and share any video records from a client meeting and all historical meetings. SuiteBox can now also be used as a standalone solution or as an integrated solution with planning software.

SuiteBox CEO, Richard Mannell, explained, “There has been lots of press and coverage about fully automated robo-advice but very little about the huge opportunity that exists to combine a digital experience with a human adviser. As anyone in this space will tell you the challenge is the cost of traditional human advice and that’s where SuiteBox comes in. Now SuiteBox users can leverage our virtual collaboration tools with any advice technology and smart digital experience to offer low cost, effective and efficient virtual advice.”

Recently McKinsey issued a report where they estimated 42 million households globally, representing $66 billion in revenue, are candidates for virtual advice including two million households with $400 billion in assets and $2 billion of revenues in Australia alone.

Using SuiteBox an adviser can meet with a client located anywhere in the world. They can share and review documents, sign online and record the meeting using any web-enabled device. Virtual advice facilitates the development of advice hubs, which have rapidly developed in the US, and offer the ability to reduce the cost of delivery of financial advice by up to 75%.

Christopher Bates, CEO of independent financial advisers Canopy Private, a major adopter of virtual advice solutions, said, “Suitebox simply and easily breaks down the barrier of location and geography and allows me to comprehensively service my clients whenever and wherever is convenient to them.”

Mannell continued, “A good part of our continued success has come from SuiteBox being a founding member of Afiniation, the connections we have made as a result and how we’ve used Afiniation as a foundation for expansion into Australia from New Zealand. SuiteBox has had an unprecedented level of interest since the recent Afiniation showcase, and we will be making an announcement shortly on major new clients and integration partners.”

The recent Afiniation Showcase, held at the Ivy Ballroom in Sydney, featured over 30 of Australia and New Zealand’s top FinTech innovators, sponsors including AustralianSuper and Dion and keynote speakers including the NSW Minister for Innovation and Better Regulation, Victor Dominello, Citi’s Managing Director of Customer Franchise, Linda Duncombe and the NZ Trade Commissioner David McLeish.

Click here to view highlights from the recent Afiniation Showcase.

The post SuiteBox Launches new Financial Services Virtual Advice Innovations appeared first on AdviserVoice.