“Every day [the platform manufacturing industry] faces new threats – Google could probably do what we do if it was a focus for them,” Mr Heine said.

“The SMSF administration software providers are more of a threat than the larger platform providers will admit – they are effectively cutting out the platform – as it all becomes automated and people try to transact through them. They will become more of a threat in the SMSF space.”

Mr Heine added that the bigger players should be particularly concerned if the SMSF admin software providers move into other financial services realms such as portfolio construction and trust portfolios.

The comments follow a session in which Kelly Power, head of platforms and insurance at BT Financial Group, said that unless a service provider can offer the full gamut of platform services right through to execution, then they are “more complementary” to the banks’ service offering than a threat.

“There is an outstanding question about what the impact would be if one of the software providers moved into execution and the end-to-end, but at the moment they’re not really competition,” Ms Power said.