Michael Kitces: Is our financial planning software improving our productivity or destroying it?
We really enjoyed reading this post by US financial planner, Michael Kitces, in which he asks whether increasingly complex financial planning software is:
- Consuming more of a financial adviser’s time than is desirable en route to the generation of a client’s financial plan?; and
- Deterring clients, who would like to work on the creation of their financial plan with their adviser, because the software appears so impenetrably complicated to the untrained eye?
Our own view is no secret because we’ve posed the question before about ‘Who is financial services technology for?’.
We’ve also talked about the irony that financial planning technology awards appear to measure the quality of technology by the number of features packed into it, rather than the usefulness or ease with which those features can be used (see: ‘We’re one year old today and are proud to have failed to win a single award’).
But we particularly like Michael’s point about software being designed so it’s easily used by clients and advisers alike.
We won’t pretend that we set out to design Moneyscope to be used by our users’ clients (because we didn’t) but it seems that Moneyscope users aren’t afraid to let their clients loose on Moneyscope on their laptop, iPad or tablet during meetings anyway - like this example or this one.
And, like Michael, we think that this can only be a good thing for both clients and advisers.
After all, the ability of software to enable clients and advisers to work collaboratively on lifetime cashflow forecasts must, surely, contribute to a greater sense of partnership and common purpose?
Just imagine if all financial planning software was designed so it was intuitively easy to use, regardless of whether you’re an adviser or a client working alongside an adviser - that’s bound to lead to software which aids adviser productivity isn’t it?
Out and about in February
Richard Allum of Moneyscope will be taking to the road for a few dates in February. He’ll be spreading the word about cashflow forecasting.
Richard will be speaking at the threesixty Paraplanning Masterclasses taking place on 17 and 29 February, and the IFP Financial Planning day on 23 February, and will talk about the role of cashflow forecasting in helping to bring clients’ financial situations to life.
So don’t be a stranger. If you’re going to any of these events then say ‘hello’. We’d love to catch up with you.
Love it! Made a big difference during early meetings when we are working through a clients plan. It has impacted on a number of client decisions already so paid for itself more than a few times.
Late last year, we posted the first of six animations featuring Moneyscope users.
Here’s the second. This time we’ve recorded a call with Philippa Gee of Philippa Gee Wealth Management based in Church Stretton, Shropshire.
Just like the call with Gary Phillips, what you hear is what was said. It’s an unscripted, unedited and unprompted one-take ‘open mike’ phone call.
Problem-solving and other things
Recently we’ve been considering the problem of problem-solving with Moneyscope.
By problem-solving, we mean those occasions where a client’s forecast kicks up a cash-flow dilemma somewhere down the line - where cash runs out, for instance.
At the moment, you might have to turn to your own Excel spreadsheet - or a heavy-duty piece of financial planning software - to help solve the problem and remodel the forecast.
We’d like to fix that and we thought you might be interested to see what’s behind our thinking. So Richard has recorded the short screencast (above) to explain what we’re working on at the moment.
As you’d expect from Moneyscope, we’ll make sure that the addition of the problem-solving feature doesn’t dilute the speed and simplicity that we know advisers enjoy; we’re just eager to add an easy-to-use tool that we think users will really like.
All being well, we expect to put this change live early in 2012.
A few more things for the wish-list
We consider the addition of the problem-solving feature to be the final piece in the Moneyscope jigsaw, but we’re also thinking about a few small - but potentially useful - tweaks at the moment including:
- Enabling advisers to add their own logo to Moneyscope reports;
- The ability to apply varying rates of inflation to different items of income and expenditure;
- Negative values highlighted in red in Moneyscope graphs.
That’s what we’ve been thinking about but would you find those innovations useful? Let us know what you think.
Are you Apple Mac or Windows PC?
In a moment, we’re going to invite you to help us satisfy our curiosity.
We’re interested to discover the extent to which financial advice professionals use Apple Macs versus Windows PCs for work – and which they would prefer to use.
But, first, the back story. (Although, if you really can’t wait, we’ll be inviting you to complete a very quick three-question survey which you can visit here: Mac or Windows PC survey.)
Last week, Moneyscope founder, Richard Allum, became embroiled in a debate on Twitter which was swirling around the question of whether applications developed by investment platforms worked equally well on both an Apple Mac and Windows PC.
Anecdotally, the evidence was pretty inconclusive. However, amid the exchanges, there was a suggestion from one tweeter that there simply wasn’t the demand from Mac users to warrant development of software for Mac as as well as for Windows.
That assertion piqued our interest.
We wondered whether people who’d prefer to use Macs were having to resort to Windows PCs at work in order to use some of the software out there. Then we wondered whether this, ironically, was leading technology providers to conclude that there wasn’t latent demand to design for the Mac operating system.
In other words, are developers of software basing their assumptions on actual use rather than preferred use? Would more people prefer to use a Mac at work if they could only use their Macs at work? (Otherwise known as the ‘chicken and the egg’ question.)
And what about emerging mobile platforms? Would people already prefer to use an iPad or tablet device (where Apple and Google offer the leading operating systems, of course)?
So that’s why we’re inviting you to complete this short survey about the technology you currently use and would prefer to use.
There are only three questions, so it should only take a matter of moments to complete.
We’re really interested to hear what people think so feel free to pass the survey link on to other financial advice professionals.
Here’s the link to the survey again: Mac or Windows PC survey.
Not so long ago, we asked for volunteers who would be willing speak to us - over the phone - and let us know what they like about Moneyscope.
So here’s Gary Phillips of Phillips Financial Planning in Newry, County Down; the first of six advice professionals who feature in six individual animations that we’ll occasionally publish over the next few weeks.
What you hear is what was said. It’s an unscripted, unedited and unprompted one-take ‘open mike’ phone call.
We let people like Gary know what we hoped to achieve by recording the call - to help people who don’t use Moneyscope understand why people who do use Moneyscope do - but, as far as the content of the call was concerned, well we left that up to Gary to decide.
We’d like to thank Gary for taking the time to talk to us, and for letting us use the audio from the call for this animation.
And, while we’re at it, we’d also like to thank Philippa Gee of Philippa Gee Wealth Management, John Gay of Frisco Financial Planning in Texas, USA, Paul Richardson of Concept Financial Planning, Phil O’Connor of Whitewell Financial Planning and Pete Matthew of Jacksons Financial Services - for kindly offering their time to contribute to the project.
By the way, if any of our featured advisers ever fancy a change in career direction, we’re certain that they could all cut it as broadcasters if they ever wanted to!
I use Moneyscope after having either been a user of or trialled Truth, Voyant, and PlanLab. The latter are all very competent, but I like the simplicity of Moneyscope and it does all that I and my clients need.
It works well on Galaxy tab 10.1 on Android 3.1. Screen size good, could be used with a client. Saved report to Evernote easily
Despite being enthusiasts for all of their products, we try to remember that there is life beyond Apple. So with that in mind, we asked people to let us know if they were using Moneyscope on tablets other than the iPad.
We already know that it works well on the iPad and even iPhone.
However, we were delighted when James Dean replied to our question on Twitter to confirm that it worked well on the Galaxy Tab running on Android.
So have you used Moneyscope on something other than an Apple device? We’re curious so let us know.
