Some great points HAC, agree with most of what you have said. Value your input as someone with good experience in the FP industry.
Yes, there has been many companies to offshore SOAs to for a considerable time, but you're right, none have mastered with any scale (whether they should be classed as competitors is debatable, and MF clearly feels they shouldn't). Have personally used many, and have not found one that ticks all the boxes. The issues are generally around:
Quality - the finished product is often poor, so you spend that much time fixing their mistakes you would probably have been better doing yourselves.
Preparation - a lot of providers require significant work done at the front end. You have to prepare that much paperwork before the provider will accept the request, again, often you are better simply doing yourself.
Turnaround time - most have poor capacity, so as we get busy, so do they, and turnaround time blows out, which defeats the purpose. Most will promise 5 days, but will end up at much higher in peak periods.
People - generally these operators are Financial Planners who begun outsourcing for their own practice - then thought to expand and offer to other practices. No expertise in offshoring, overseas culture etc.
Security - most do everything via email, and have very little data security. The majority would simply not get approved by the main players for use, such as an AMP for this exact reason.
For a guaranteed 3 day turnaround, a quality, compliant product - I would pay $250-$350 every day of the week. Have paid a lot more than that for poor quality. There are no $50 SoAs being done, so I actually think IAM's margins are very healthy.
There is a huge market there for the taking for the first operator who can get the above right. Will that be IAM - many are not sold, but I think they will. Why?
So what does IAM have that no other provider has?
Their training and hiring program is unrivalled. No-one else has MF - take a look at his linked-in resume, and compare that to some of the other "competitors". No-one else has a portal - which should provide market leading security and reduce a lot of the upfront paperwork mentioned above, and make available to the entire market. No-one else has the capacity to handle this. No-one else has the industry contacts of firstly Rantall and PC.
Cost wise, they are extremely competitive, as many providers charge a premium for a 3 day TO, which is standard for IAM. I actually feel as they gain market share and economies of scale, build efficiencies and automate a lot of the back end, they could even reduce their price and still maintain very healthy margins. No "competitor" could do this, and that could create the monopoly.
DYOR
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