Raymond James Financial Inc. will continue to score big points with its financial advisers with the availability of MoneyGuidePro's Goal Planning & Monitoring software.
The firm formally announced the introduction of the software Friday.
In development for months and already in use by 200 advisers, the application is fully integrated with the Raymond James Advisor Access platform, which was rolled out this year.
“The idea is that with a single sign-on and then a single click on the adviser's client page, they can open a plan with up-to-date holdings and values flowing in from our account system,” said Patrick O'Connor, senior vice president of the Wealth Management Solutions group at Raymond James.
This should prove to be a big deal in terms of adviser efficiency when working on financial, retirement and other goal plans with clients.
Raymond James began a phased rollout of the software last week, and it should be available to all independent and branch advisers within the next three months.
The Wealth Management Solutions group will provide training sessions and support as well.
The Goal Planning & Monitoring program from MoneyGuidePro replaces various other homegrown or highly customized third-party financial planning tools that Raymond James has used on an enterprise level for years.
Before the pilot program began, only about 50 of Raymond James' thousands of advisers used MoneyGuidePro, which is made by PIEtech Inc. and is one of the most popular planning tools on the market.
“When a plan is created and presented to a client, the adviser can, if they choose to, share the plan snapshot with them, and the client can, in turn, use [the software's] PlayZone or "What Are You Afraid Of?' tools to look at other hypothetical situations they might foresee,” Mr. O'Connor said.
Behind the scenes, the planning piece is connected to the Raymond James customer relationship management system.
“When you create a prospect [file], it is populating our CRM tool in the background and picking up on that information as well,” Mr. O'Connor said.
The firm's 1,500 employee- advisers use a customized version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, known internally as Client Center. The Dynamics-based system also is available to RJ's roughly 3,300 affiliated independent advisers, many of whom have begun migrating to it.
Dynamics, which has been used by the firm for six years, is a good fit for the re-engineered Raymond James platform, Advisor Access, as it is built on top of the Microsoft.Net architecture.
Naturally, Dynamics works with Microsoft Outlook.
Advisor Access was built to better integrate information from 20 different important data systems at Raymond James.
“Our focus, our goal, is that everything is one click away and all contextual,” said Vin Campagnoli, senior vice president of technology strategy and development at Raymond James Private Client Group.
“From a financial adviser's perspective, it fits the bill,” he said. “We heard from a lot of our advisers at our national conference, telling us this is what they wanted, and we think we have delivered.”
HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE
At the gathering, the firm set up an area where advisers could get hands-on experience with the new platform and, perhaps more importantly, explain what new features they wanted or what changes should be made. It was so successful that Raymond James advisers have continued to talk about it for months.
“GPM is a perfect example of the investments we're making in technology to support advisers while reinforcing our firm's 50-year history of emphasizing financial planning as an integral part of a client-centric advisory process,” Mr. O'Connor said in a statement.
djanowski@investmentnews.com Twitter: @ddjanowski
