A new feature called Collaboration Connect, found in goalgamiPro, the planning and client qualification tool from Advisor Software Inc., allows advisers to communicate with their clients in a whole new way.
Using Collaboration Connect, advisers can enable a password-protected website for their clients, on a household basis, to access and edit their plan goals and share details with them.
This allows clients the real-time ability to enter changes to their own situation — such as a job change or inheritance — and notify their adviser.
COMPLEMENTS OTHER APPS
The adviser has control over setting up the client login and can do so manually or direct goalgamiPro to send an e-mail to clients that allows them to set up their own account. Older clients might prefer that the adviser do it, while the younger crowd might prefer to do it themselves.
Once changes have been made, say, to spending goals, clients can elect to generate a goal affordability analysis.
The web-based goalgamiPro software as a service application was launched late last year for advisers. It was meant to complement far-more-comprehensive financial planning applications such as MoneyGuidePro or Naviplan.
The mission of goalgamiPro is to assist advisers in carrying out basic, initial planning in meetings with clients or to help advisers quickly determine whether a client is a good fit for them.
“We also see goalgamiPro and Collaboration Connect as appealing to advisory or wealth management firms that do not yet offer financial planning as a service and need a bridge to the more complex and comprehensive planning applications out there,” said Mike Wolff, vice president of product management at Advisor Software.
Collaboration Connect is a unique offering, and I am not aware of a direct competitor, though it does share some similarities with other products.
For example, cash-flow-based financial planning vendor eMoney Advisor was one of the first advisory products on the market to introduce a document vault for storing plans and other documents with clients.
Providers in many different categories, from customer relationship management vendors to custodians and broker-dealers, have since begun to offer similar tools.
InStream Wealth is another offering that shares some similarities in terms of providing advisers with some basic planning features, but it has a far wider mission, with many tools and calculators that take it beyond the simplicity inherent in goalgamiPro. InStream aspires to grow into more of an advisory ecosystem and is also free (InvestmentNews, Oct. 23).
The goalgamiPro solution is priced at $495 per adviser for an annual subscription, and offers a seven-day free trial.
For now, advisers must rely on file imports of client data from custodians or manual input of data, but Advisor Software is in the middle of building automated integrations with Schwab Advisor Services and TD Ameritrade Institutional. The latter is expected to be completed and in production within the next two to three months.
Advisor Software is also working on similar direct integrations with two CRM providers, Salesforce and Grendel.
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COLLEGE PLANNING 2.0
Troy Onink, chief executive of Stratagee Corp., aspires to make every adviser an expert in college planning and financing.
“I don't want to see a client going to a college planner because I could not give them the expertise,” he said, referring to his own career spent providing in-depth consultation to investor clients and adviser clients alike on the subject of college planning and financing.
Through his software, called Smart Search, Mr. Onink tries to deliver to advisers as much of that expertise as he has been able to translate into code.
I first wrote about Smart Search three years ago and am writing about it now because Version 2.0 was recently rolled out.
The online software-as-a-service has now grown to 2,348 users (8,000 if you count all those who have access to the software under enterprise licenses), and its latest version offers lots of additional ease-of-use features.
It also remains very affordable at $399 per year for an annual subscription.
I can cover only a partial list of the new features here (visit InvestmentNews.com/technology for a blog entry with more detail).
The single most obvious change is a new, more streamlined user interface that makes navigating the application easier, especially when an adviser is looking at multiple what-if scenarios to calculate and determine the best use of a family's available income, assets and other resources.
A specific feature has been added for advisers of “wealthier” clients — streamlined help for families of students not eligible for need-based college aid. The application now can help identify potential merit aid awards at colleges of interest to decrease the net cost of college.
Calculations have been added for determining eligibility for federal Pell grants, and subsidized and unsubsidized Stafford loans, at each college, as well.
The software is also useful in helping advisers and parents pick the right colleges to apply to, based on their child's academic abilities, test scores and affordability.
But at least one expert cautions advisers against taking on more than an initial advisory role to parents.
“After specializing in this space for the past 14 years, I have found that it is virtually impossible to create a software tool that can consistently and accurately predict what type of financial aid package a student will receive from particular colleges. There are too many intangibles that affect the outcome,” said adviser Deborah Fox, founder of the Fox Financial Planning Network and Fox College Funding LLC.
djanowski@investmentnews.com
