Are we finally beginning to see a shift in the way financial advisors approach client service? The answer is a resounding \u201cyes,\u201d according to some experts.
Many advisors are now looking to increase the financial planning part of their businesses rather than focusing on product sales, says Kate Pattison, marketing manager of financial planning at CCH Canada Ltd. <\/b> in Toronto. Although some have long perceived financial planning as an unpaid service that provides neither value nor revenue to their practices, many advisors have discovered that creating plans with clients can promote loyalty, especially during market fluctuations. After all, any client relationship based on products can get pretty shaky when products don\u2019t perform, she suggests.
Pattison says her firm\u2019s FP Solutions financial planning software can help advisors develop the financial planning part of their practices \u2014 and add value in the process.
FP Solutions is an Excel-based, modular financial planning program. Because it is modular, its various planning modules provide the flexibility needed to customize plans for individual client situations.
The software program is available in four levels of planning sophistication: basic, plus, advanced and business. Each level is a step up from the previous one, providing users with more advanced planning modules. The basic level is focused on investment, retirement and single-needs planning; the plus level offers additional planning modules for insurance planning, including disability, critical illness and long-term care; the advanced level provides cash-flow planning modules; and the business level offers all the personal planning modules with the addition of planning modules for clients who have their own businesses.
FP Solutions is an amalgamation of the software programs FPS2000, Qplan, Briefcase and Probability Analyst. CCH took the best features from each of these programs and built them into FP Solutions. It then added new features and functionality. The idea was to create a program that could grow with an advisor\u2019s practice, Pattison says.
This new platform also offers a program to dealers or firms that will give their advisors the option of choosing different levels based on their needs. Organizations whose advisors provide financial planning across all four levels within the firm are then able to work together on client files when needed.
The software is lifestyle-driven. It also offers advisors the ability to provide clients with a road map to financial success. It can, for example, show clients what products will help them get to where they want to be. FP Solutions is also user-friendly, but that depends on each client\u2019s situation and how much information he or she provides.
For the most part, client fact-finding data entry can be completed in less than an hour.
And because the fact finder is electronic, the advisor can e-mail it to the client to be filled out. The advisor can later upload it directly into the program. This saves the advisor a lot of data-entry time and allows the client to participate in the planning process.
Some advisors even post the fact finder on their Web sites as a prospecting tool \u2014 clients who complete it get a financial snapshot of their current situation. This gives prospects a real incentive to contact the advisor.
Some of the other features in FP Solutions include:
> FP Focus, an executive summary that consolidates information from across the planning modules, allowing advisors to create a (maximum) 12-page report. FP Focus is ideal for prospect meetings and client updates. It\u2019s also the one to give clients when they don\u2019t want or need full financial reports.
> T1 tax calculations, which provide calculations for every year of the plan. Available tax information is accessed from CCH.
> The corporate planning module, which provides personal and\/or financial planning for business-owner clients.
CCH is scheduled to include enhancements to the FP Focus executive summary as well as new planning concepts for 2006. The company usually provides four updates a
year, based on suggestions that come from the thousands of users across the country.
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