Should I Upload My Financial Information to Emoney?

Craig'due south Notation: When we publishedour showtime FinPlan Shootout back in 2015, we had no idea that information technology would become our most popular mail of all fourth dimension and reach Google's first page results for financial planning software and still exist there 2 years after.  Now it'southward time for an update that is bigger and better, and so we've doubled the number of products covered!

Our terminal review included but eMoney Advisor and MoneyGuidePro, just since then, Naviplan has repositioned to target mass affluent clients, so we included them and newcomer Advizr has gained enough marketplace share to be worthy of consideration amid the industry leaders.

This review was written by Josh Iverson, who also wrote the 2015 Finplan Shootout between eMoney and MoneyGuidePro. He has washed a fantastic job of analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of these complex products and providing more than than just a regurgitation of marketing materials or lists of features. He has included pros and cons and comparisons in each fundamental functional area, to help advisors who might be on the fence when deciding which production is best for their firm.

Overview

The financial planning arms race has heated up in 2017, much similar the geopolitical situation, with upstart competitors and grizzled veterans giving the industry leaders a run for the money. While the tension between nations ebbs and flows, the boxing among these software heavyweights is likely to intensify every bit more than and more than advisors turn to planning to comply with regulations and amend their competitiveness.

As these apps gain in power and investors become increasingly comfortable viewing financial planning information online, a growing number of advisors interested in boosting client engagement have added one or more financial planning apps to their customer services repertoire.

With a seemingly overwhelming amount of data bachelor well-nigh the major finplan apps, choosing betwixt them tin be a tiresome chore for advisors who are already beset with a multitude of duties. In this review, we aim to cut through the noise and give advisors a helpful analysis of four leaders in the field that they can use when deciding which finplan app is best for them.

In no detail order, this mammoth review covers four products:

• eMoney Advisor from Fidelity
• MoneyGuide Pro from PIEtech
• Naviplan from Advicent
• Advizr from Advizr

Table Stakes

The marketplace for financial planning software has matured considerably in recent years equally vendors leap frog each other with new releases that continue to add value to existing functionality and push the envelope with new functionality.

All four of the products in this review have robust offerings that have significant overlap in the following core features:

• Advanced financial planning
• Analytics and reporting
• Client Portal
• Document Vault
• Data Aggregation
• Decision Center
• Marketing content and tools
• Third Party Integrations

We volition discuss each of the above issues functionality, merely will avoid just listing standard functionality and instead focus on the aspects that differentiate each production from the others.

eMoney Advisor

Founded in 2000, eMoney Counselor is a comprehensive financial planning software application that offers clients both, goals-based and greenbacks-flow-based, analyses and projections.

Purchased by Allegiance over two years agone, the platform aggregates more than $i trillion in customer assets over more than two meg accounts and services bulge-bracket clients, like TD Ameritrade, RBC Wealth Management, New York Life, and LPL Financial. The business firm works with 46 of the top 50 broker dealers, which are capable of absorbing eMoney'due south relatively higher cost.

Co-ordinate to a 2017 survey conducted by TechnologyToolsforToday, 25% of advisors were using eMoney Counselor.

eMoney recently added lead capture functionality that enables an advisor to add a link on their website or LinkedIn page that prospective clients can interact with. It prompts the prospect to provide basic information, asks them about their financial goals and displays how shut they are to achieving those goals.

eMoney Advisor – Integrations

If the prospect is interested, they tin then sign up for a meeting with the counselor. This characteristic is perfectly suited for the tendency towards migrating financial activities (including finding an counselor) online, and puts eMoney ahead of the pack when it comes to helping advisors market their concern as well as create financial plans for their clients.

User Experience

The kickoff thing we noticed on the eMoney counselor homepage was the "Financial Feed" section on the right-side of the screen, offering users a Facebook-like scrolling data feed. The feed provides advisors with real-time and interactive alerts, tasks and news, with embedded links to all of their data.  This can be useful for tracking important updates that demand to be communicated to clients.

Additionally, the feed displays alerts when a client has logged on to the client portal, added a new account or uploaded information to their profile. Also, eMoney is developing a new feature that will integrate fiscal information from external sources, which will help to build portfolio projections based on market events such equally visitor earnings reports. The only downside to this data feed is that, like Facebook, it tin can bombard advisors with redundant and excessive notifications, during times of high client activity.

Meanwhile, in the master interface, the three primary categories highlighted are assets under direction (organized by asset class, tax condition, etc…), assets held away at other custodians and top movers, which displays the nigh active holdings in the advisor's investment portfolio in real-time. The interface design uses color efficiently without overwhelming the end-user. The affluence of clean white infinite establishes the foundation for a modern and intuitive navigation experience, paring the interface down to its well-nigh essential and convenient form.

Planning

eMoney's next-gen planning and analytics component might offer the platform'southward greatest value proposition. This feature gives advisors three planning portals:

• Goal-Planner, for conventional retirement and education planning;
• Decision Centre, for cash menses-centric planning; and
• Distribution Center, for estate planning.

All three portals accept the same interactive functionality, embedded with a "what if" feature that provides a drop-downwardly list of portfolio-disruptive scenarios, similar a deport market, disability of a spouse, retirement, heightened aggrandizement and other events. The platform also enables advisors to combine multiple what-if scenarios into their projections.

Analytics & Reporting

And for more detailed scenario insights, advisors can access the Decision Center and cull from three views: cash catamenia, detailed cash menses or a Monte Carlo analysis. eMoney's analytics allows advisors to mine their book by age, institution, account type, managed assets vs. held-away avails, and a host of other offerings.

eMoney Advisor – Advisor Analytics

eMoney too offers clients a "techniques" function, where advisors can explore potential actions they tin be taken to fund a goal or encounter a cash-menstruation objective. A recent update allows advisors to buy an add-on  to view numerous charts at once instead of but a few – as many as 30 or 40 at a time.

Balance Sail

eMoney's balance sheet reporting provides a convenient, easy to follow listing of all client assets under the umbrella of the household. While their balance sheet functionality works well, information technology is not quite every bit easy to view specific sub-account breakdowns as it is in Advizr.

eMoney Advisor – Balance Sail

Client Portal

Some other impressive feature is eMoney'south client portal, which provides a welcoming, detail-rich and interactive user experience for clients. The portal displays a smorgasbord of relevant client information including full net worth, investments, insurance, budgets and spending in a way that delivers maximal transparency, while minimizing navigation difficulty.

The eMoney portal is arguably the all-time bachelor in the industry, fifty-fifty when standalone portals and not-fiscal planning applications are included.

eMoney Advisor – Client Portal

It is so far ahead of its competitors that in that location are many advisors who use other fiscal planning tools will purchase eMoney just for admission to the portal!

The client portal also facilitates the assemblage of held-away assets and accounts, which assist advisors get a clearer picture of their clients' fiscal lives. A recent update has made customer navigation easier and more intuitive.

Another recent comeback allows clients to click on a ticker symbol from their portfolio to view Morningstar data. Additionally, eMoney has updated the client on-boarding process to include an interactive goals section where end-clients tin can easily add goals, runway their progress towards funding those goals, and visualize how they touch on their long-term fiscal outlook.

Tertiary Party Integration and Data Aggregation

eMoney boasts some highly impressive integrations with CRM Redtail, portfolio management arrangement Orion Counselor Services, Albridge Wealth Reporting, and Morningstar, to proper name a few. With all of these strategic partner integrations, an advisor's workload can exist reduced so past eliminating manual transfer of information betwixt applications and duplicate entry.

eMoney's leverages their internally developed data aggregation organisation that allows clients to pull holdings from accounts held at firms that aren't covered past integrations. This differs from the other three competitors, which all employ tertiary-party aggregation products: Yodlee for MoneyGuide Pro and Quovo for Naviplan and Advizr.

eMoney Counselor – Integrations

There is no evidence that eMoney'south information aggregation is ameliorate or worse than Yodlee or Quovo, simply they are all different in their underlying processes for analyzing and cleaning data and in the number and types of connections they have to the tens of thousands of financial institutions from which they pull data.

For advisors trying to choose between these four applications, if viewing outside assets is important to a majority of your clients or if you plan to encourage clients to amass their held-abroad accounts in your arrangement, It'south critical for you to know where your clients' outside avails are being held and annotation any concentrations at specific custodians or fiscal institutions.

The reason is that the different aggregation vendors have to develop relationships with all of the custodians, banks, broker-dealers and other financial institutions from which they pull data.  Some of these connections are screen-scraping (reading the screens and extracting the data field by field) while others are directly feeds (where the financial institution sends data right to the aggregation vendor). The direct feeds are cleaner and less prone to errors.

If a big percentage of your clients' held-abroad assets are located at a financial institution where there aggregation vendor has to use screen-scraping, then the data quality will not be every bit good.  This would be one negative mark against the vendor when making your last determination.

Security

The eMoney platform likewise boasts top-of-the-line security architecture. Although the cloud has been a well-documented haven for cyber attackers, eMoney uses 256-scrap, Secure-Socket Layer encryption to safeguard client information, and stores all of its information in geographically separated data centers.

Cost

At an almanac cost of $3,600 per advisor  for the recently upgraded 360 Pro package, eMoney is more expensive than the average financial planning application. A discounted annual price of $2,400 per advisor is available for firms with 2 or more advisors, as long as all advisors in the firm are included as subscribers. eMoney also offers ii other subscription models. emX for advisors looking for a more than streamlined approach to planning and emX Select for those advisors looking to leverage eMoney'southward features outside of planning. emX begins at $two,400 per year per advisor while emX Select starts at $1,800.

For the right advisor with the correct clientele, the subscription price is well worth the investment. The user experience, intuitiveness and functionality of the platform are seamless, which makes eMoney stand out from the competition. Cost discounts may be available if the advisor'due south firm signs a deal for firmwide adoption of the software. The behemoth independent advisory firm LPL Fiscal has signed a such a deal, enabling it to utilise a white characterization version of the software.

Score

Each financial planning application is graded in the six categories described above on a scale of 1 to five.  eMoney'south stiff showing in their Customer Portal, Planning, Analytics & Reporting and Security features helped them achieve an outstanding total score of 37 out of 40. This represents a .five increase from our concluding review of the software 2 years ago, reflecting a bump from 4.0 to 4.5 in the Integrations & Aggregation category. This reflects eMoney's motion to bring assemblage in-house to proceeds greater control over the process.

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MoneyGuidePro

MoneyGuidePro is another of the dominant players in the financial planning space. Developed by financial software company PIETech, information technology has been the most-used financial planning platform for the past seven years, co-ordinate to a recent Financial Planning Magazine RIA survey.

42% of advisors polled in the T3 survey chose MoneyGuidePro every bit their main financial planning software.

MoneyGuidePro is a goals-based application, which, according to their marketing materials, is ideal for advisors servicing clients who are in the accumulation stages of the wealth wheel or have less than $i 1000000 of investable assets. This places information technology squarely in the mass flush market place segment.

User Feel

When it comes to financial planning software, their mantra is engagement. This philosophy is evident on MoneyGuidePro's chief menu interface with its integration of visually engaging icons that correspond to user options. Their liberal use of graphical controls such equally gauges to indicate probability of success, sliders to allow users to suit settings such as retirement age and life expectancy and drag and driblet goal setting profoundly improve usability.

Planning

With MoneyGuidePro'due south SMART Portal, the client becomes an agile participant in the planning procedure from the first. While the client is engaged in the process, the advisor maintains ultimate control. Also, the advisor controls the types of modules that the customer tin see.

Also, the platform's PlayZone tool lets clients adjust assumptions to see how different moves affect their probability of success in a visual and interactive way. The programme even allows advisors to model a variable annuity with a living benefit in the framework of a plan to see how their portfolio will react to different marketplace events. Likewise, the client can besides admission data particular pages to view items, similar twelvemonth-past-yr details of taxes, return on investments, retirement income, and projected expenses. This detail is useful in educating clients about the impact of inflation on the plan goals.

At the end of 2015 MGP added functionality that calculates health care out of pocket expenses, taking into account Medicare and private insurance coverage. This addition to the tool's features puts MGP alee of other finplan solutions when information technology comes to forecasting healthcare expenses. In 2016 the tool'south social security optimization function was updated, enabling information technology to account for the recent changes fabricated to when and how individuals can file to claim social security.

Analytics & Reporting

The programme's presentation tool is another infrequent characteristic. Afterward creating a client plan, MoneyGuidePro automatically converts the document into an engaging PowerPoint-fashion display, which visually engages the client with a host of graphically-rich information and information.

In that location is as well a feature chosen Star Track, which allows advisor to save their clients' plans and compare information technology with fiscal projections created in past years. However, Star Track only compares certain metrics, as opposed to the entire plan.

The primary drawback to MoneyGuidePro's reporting and analytics functionality is that it doesn't rely on cash-flow information, which diminishes the accuracy of the projections. However, the lack of cash-flow-intensive analysis may non pose a problem for advisors with lower-net-worth clientele.

Balance Sheet

MoneyGuidePro offers the ability to run reports that display net worth past individual account and at the household level, which essentially functions every bit a balance sheet. While the net worth data is comprehensive, it is not easy to drill downwardly into the underlying levels when in the household view. More granular detail is provided in the net worth study PDF.

MoneyGuidePro – Net Worth Summary

Client Portal

The planning tab at the summit of the screen easily directs users to the customer on-boarding portal, which is easy-to-navigate. Similar eMoney, the portal design includes abundant white space with conservative splashes of color. But once the planning tab is accessed the platform's data-input functionality shines.

The application has a life expectancy calculator where users tin can specify variables like, smoker or non-smoker status; their state of wellness and other detailed data points. From the information provided, the program tin then predict the probability of living to various ages. And if the client is married, MoneyGuidePro will calculate the life expectancies of both husband and wife.

In that location have been some rumors that MoneyGuidePro has slowed downwardly or stopped development work on their portal since then many of their clients use eMoney'due south portal.  We take even heard that they recommend their clients use eMoney's portal instead of their own!  While nosotros couldn't confirm this, eMoney and MoneyGuidePro were one of the first pairs of competitors to build integration hooks into each other's products to provide tighter information transfer between them.

3rd Party Integration and Aggregation

Integration with third party software and services is an area where MoneyGuidePro stands out from the rest of the field.  They at present interface with over 100 data providers, which is by far the largest of any financial planning awarding.

Back up is provided for all of the leading products that well-nigh advisors are using such as CRM, account aggregation, portfolio management and customer portals.  Non only exercise they list all of their partners on their website, but clicking on the corresponding icon brings up a detailed breakdown of which interfaces are supported.  This is extremely helpful for an advisor'due south IT guys to know what tin and tin't be done with each product. The app uses Yodlee for client account assemblage, which allows for information to exist gathered from client accounts which are non available via an integration link.

Security

PIEtech provides a comprehensive security program to protect MoneyGuidePro data. The company regularly performs reviews of its security procedures and proudly proclaims that is has never suffered any type of security breech.

To maximize data security, the company limits data stored in the app only to information necessary to create financial plans, and does not shop or collect Social Security, credit carte du jour or account numbers.

Customer information collected for apply in MoneyGuidePro is kept on servers owned and managed by PIEtech that are heavily secured, with multiple security controls including biometrics, keycard and PIN-code for concrete access. The information centre where the servers are located is SSAE-xvi SOC two blazon Ii audited and certified on an annual footing.

Electronic security for client data is enhanced past protecting the app's servers past redundant bundle filter firewalls and by encrypting data in transit whenever it moves between a subscriber'southward computer the PIEtech servers via Ship Layer Security (TLS) protocols. Additionally, Symantec server-authentication PKI is used to assure users that they are logging on to the correct website

Price

The product sells for $1,295 a year for one advisor, which can be reduced to $995 if the counselor is associated with certain banker-dealers or custodians, for example, Charles Schwab. Discounts are besides available for multiple users as follows:

• 2 users: $995 each
• three users: $975 each
• iv users: $925 each
• five-7 users: $850 each
• 9-20 users: $750 each
• 20-29 users: $725 each
• thirty-l users: $700 each

An additional $365 per advisor is charged to add account assemblage. The service is significantly less expensive than eMoney Advisor and Naviplan, and like its competitors, is a cloud-based solution.

Score

Each financial planning awarding is graded in the half-dozen categories described above on a calibration of 1 to 5.  MoneyGuidePro was superior in user Experience and solid in all of the other categories, with a total score to 35.5 out of 40. The score rose 0.5 from our last review of the product as the app'due south extensive security measures and performance additional its Security ranking.

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Naviplan

Later on years of operating as a finplan app especially associated with advisors serving HNW/UHNW clients due to its extensive estate planning features, Naviplan made a major move towards mass market place accessibility in the first quarter of 2017 by adding business relationship aggregation to its impressive set of planning features.

While it lags behind its cash-flow based competitor eMoney when it comes to the sheer depth of its features set, its usability is a notch above eMoney from the standpoint of ease of utilise and clarity of reporting. This, combined with its newly-added aggregation capabilities, makes Naviplan well-positioned to compete for planning dominance with the industry leaders.

User Experience

Naviplan'due south user interface demonstrates that it's possible to combine extensive functionality with efficient pattern. The main advisor page offers a plethora of options for you to select from without being so jam packed that you can't make sense of what you're seeing. The carte bar on the lefthand side of the screen offers access to the chief financial planning functions, with the middle of the screen displaying the selected items.

Naviplan truly shines in its dialogue boxes, which makes information technology like shooting fish in a barrel for both clients and advisors to enter the data necessary to consummate a plan and to view alternative scenarios. Each step of the planning procedure is clearly detailed, and the resulting plan display does an excellent job of illustrating whether programme goals accept been met and what needs to be done to meet them.

Planning

Naviplan offers comprehensive planning functionality. The software enables advisors to perform sophisticated financial modelling of major financial goals such as retirement, and college education. Information technology also allows them to testify how preparing for these types of goals affects your overall financial position and cash flow.

Naviplan – Cash Flow Module

The prompts for building a financial program are well thought-out and like shooting fish in a barrel to follow. The software makes information technology easy to explore a variety of options when computing what is needed to accomplish a goal. For example, the retirement planning prompt allows you to hands see how making changes to the underlying assumptions changes your power to achieve your goals.

An surface area where we found Naviplan to be easier to work with than eMoney was in modeling financial options for clients dealing with major financial changes such as selling a house or changing estate planning options. In these cases, Naviplan's reward over its competitor stemmed from its ability to seamlessly brandish multiple alternative planning scenarios side-by-side while retaining core client financial assumptions.

One area where Naviplan lags behind eMoney is in its lack of a certificate vault to store copies of important financial documents. Still, this functionality is planned as a futurity add together-on to the software.

Analytics & Reporting

Naviplan's analytical and reporting capabilities are all-encompassing, comparable to those offered by eMoney Advisor. The adding engine can perform Monte Carlo assay to stress test your fiscal plan to show potential outcomes. Morningstar Capital letter Markets assumptions tin exist used to projection performance on your existing portfolio assets. Naviplan's easy-to-empathise interface and reports brand it a pleasance to work with even when performing the most detailed financial analyses.

Naviplan – Analytics & Reporting Screen

The tool enables you to provide extensive data relating to cash flow and other details to make the financial planning process equally informative as possible. This applies to goals such as planning for college or saving for retirement, where you tin dive down into specific asset-level returns to make your projections as accurate every bit possible. While the app allows you to track income from investments, information technology doesn't as yet offer the ability to rail expenses at the aforementioned level of detail as its competitor eMoney, although functionality of this type is slated to be added in the hereafter.

Balance Sheet

Balance sheet data is provided through the internet worth module in Naviplan. Like Advizr, the app makes it like shooting fish in a barrel to move between household view and subaccount view when looking at the contents of the reports, although its interface is not quite every bit intuitive as Advizr'southward in this regard. The granular level of detail into diverse avails the module provides makes it possible to easily view and change the value of or add assets.

Naviplan – Net Worth Module

Customer Portal

Intuitive is an apt description for Navipan's client portal. It doesn't try to do too much or oversupply the screen with every option under the lord's day. Some finplan apps fall into the latter trap, which can more impairment than skilful by making it difficult for a client to select the functions they'd like to utilise without all-encompassing effort or on the phone – which is not something that already decorated fiscal advisors would want to encourage.

Naviplan – Customer Portal Retirement Assessment

Naviplan'southward streamlined, like shooting fish in a barrel-to-follow client portal pattern avoids this danger by making it easy for a client to find what they're looking for. The main page lists the major menu items on the left side, reserving the centre of the folio for display of the selected menu item, such as customer financial information, planning options, etc. A do good of this approach from the navigational perspective is that the menu particular display remains even after an item has been selected. This makes it easy for clients to move from one section of the portal to some other.

Third Party Integration and Data Aggregation

Naviplan offers integration capability with a preponderance of the major data providers such as Pershing, Schwab Portfolio Center and Advisor Heart, TD Ameritrade, Redtail, Albridge, and Orion. One major financial planning firm the solution doesn't interface with is LPL Financial, but this is probable due to the deal LPL signed with eMoney to private label that tool for use past its advisors.

The company has been playing catch-up with eMoney Advisor and MGP when it comes to information assemblage, which enables client to link outside accounts not held at their financial advisor'due south firm, such every bit 401ks, annuities, banking company accounts, etc., so that the data tin be aggregated in the financial planning tool. However, in the by twelvemonth Naviplan has added aggregation functionality via third-party aggregator Quovo, upping its game and making information technology competitive with eMoney and MGP in this regard.

Security

Naviplan clearly takes security seriously, having obtained ISO/IEC 27001 certification, the highest level of information security certification available for policies and procedures safeguarding security. The app also uses the highest level of physical security, past protecting client data by storing information in servers at a highly secure SSAE xvi, Blazon-2 certified data centre.

The app uses multiple points of defence force confronting intrusion to keep data secure, and isolates the production surroundings from the ones used for evolution and testing. Tunnels that are encrypted using 2-gene hallmark are used to limit access to network services provided internally and externally.

Cost

1 year of Naviplan retails for $ii,415 for a unmarried advisor shop. Adding in the client portal and aggregation raises the price to $three,857 per year. Discounts are available for multiple advisor installations as follows:

• 2-five: 10% cost discount
• 6-10 20% cost discount
• 11-25: 25% toll discount
• 26-100: 30% price discount

There are also broker-dealer discounts available which can range from five% to 15%, depending on the broker-dealer or advisory firm. In improver, if you sign up for more than one yr in advance discounts are available every bit follows:

• 2 years: 5%
• iii years: ten%
• iv years: xv%
• v years: xx%
• 6 years: 25%
• 7 years: 30%

These discounts stack with other discounts, with 30% beingness the maximum discount available.

Score

Naviplan scored an impressive 36.five out of twoscore, led by its top marks in Client Portal, Analytics & Reporting, and Security.

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Advizr

The Advizr finplan app has mounted a strong claiming to the established industry leaders due to its highly efficient design. Debuting in 2013, the app has taken reward of its condition as a relative newcomer in the field to use engineering science that enables lightning fast construction of graphs that display a client's financial status. The visitor backside Advizr recently raised funding from investors led by investment giants Franklin Templeton and SEI to enable the app to continue to improve its functionality going forward.

User Experience

The Advizr interface is one of the most efficient we've seen. The main dashboard provides summaries of the most important data points, including potential asset gathering opportunities and elevation clients by avails. The process of entering or irresolute customer data is too highly intuitive, as is the individual client display screen.

Advizr – Advisor Dashboard

The tremendously user-friendly interface design makes information technology like shooting fish in a barrel to main using the tool. Advizr is clearly a next generation finplan solution. Each part is designed to offering the maximum amount of relevant data possible in a visually appealing format. A handy flag in the upper righthand corner of the screen provides notifications of customer actions such equally logging in to the portal, registering, or adding information through the data input wizard. When compared to eMoney Advisor or MoneyGuidePro, Advizr's streamlined data collection and easy to use report functionality benefits from the newer applied science used to build the app.

Client Portal

The client portal uses the same intuitive, easy to use interface as the counselor sees, but without the plan-building functionality bachelor to the counselor. The advisor can switch to Presentation Mode to see how a customer views the software. Upon sending the client an invitation to join the portal, the client is given admission to the data entry portion of the software, where they can add asset information, upload data, and expenses and income. Once the advisor has created a financial plan, the client can be invited to view information technology through the portal.

Advizr – Net Worth Display

The customer portal has an overview screen showing net worth, greenbacks menstruation, current asset allocation, and the completed financial plan with recommendations if the advisor has authorized it. The other card options on the client portal are Electric current Finances, which shows net worth and transactions, Financial Plan, Accounts, and a Document Vault for documents the customer has uploaded. As with the advisor viewable portion of the tool, the display and graphics for presentation mode is peak notch.

Planning

Advizr'south planning interface is streamlined and efficient. While the tool doesn't probe as deeply into cash flow analysis every bit eMoney and Naviplan, information technology does offering robust cash flow planning functionality. Advizr does an fantabulous job of illustrating a client's progress towards meeting major goals. The display of current versus proposed plans is very well done, with graphics that are like shooting fish in a barrel to follow and clear recommendations to run into the goals.

Advizr – Retirement Analysis

The tool offers the power to plan for a wide range of goals, including retirement, educational activity, buying a machine or house, managing debt and more. The planning process takes into account the customer's chance tolerance and all sources of income in providing planning recommendations. The process for creating a fiscal programme is well-designed. The plan creation wizard walks you through the diverse steps involved in creating a plan, and prompts y'all to complete whatever mandatory steps that were left undone. In one case consummate, if shortfalls are detected in the planning process they are addressed via recommendations such as taking a more aggressive investing posture or setting aside more money to see a goal.

Analytics & Reporting

Advizr provides reports by the following categories: Cyberspace worth, Cash menses, Investment assets, Accounts. The reports provide a detailed breakup by year of the expected cash flows or investment growth depending on the categories. While the tool doesn't provide the same level of detailed greenbacks flow analysis that eMoney and Naviplan offer, the analysis information technology does offer is presented well.

Advizr – Investment Assets Income Report

Reports on the advisor dashboard particular prospecting opportunities in the form of asset gathering opportunities and insurance opportunities.

Residue Canvas

Advizr'due south balance sheet functionality is a cut to a higher place that of its competition. Its advanced screening and filtering allow clients and advisors to easily navigate from a household view of assets and liabilities downwards to a subaccount view by household member. You can then quickly view that person'due south accounts individually. While other apps, such as eMoney, may offer the same overall ability to view assets and liabilities past household or individual, moving between these views can be a fleck of a chore.

Advizr – Balance Canvass View

Third Party Integration and Assemblage

While Advizr tin't compete as of all the same with the volume of integrations a long-established tool such as MGP has amassed, it nevertheless offers a solid roster of integrations, including:

• Black Diamond
• Blueleaf
• Charles Schwab
• Orion
• Redtail
• Riskalyze
• TD Ameritrade
• Wealthbox

The finplan tool uses Quovo, the same tertiary-party aggregator used by Naviplan.

Security

Advizr takes a robust approach to security, using the latest high security web pattern to ensure information security. The service is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), which uses SOC1 compliance guidelines. This enables Advizr to utilise the compliance and security features offer by Amazon, including their availability SLA (service level agreement).

To increase security farther, the tool uses Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), which is a logically isolated segment of AWS. This allows the tool's data to reside on private subnets with AWS, to help ward against unauthorized traffic. Additionally, sensitive customer data is protected further by the utilize of 256-chip encryption engineering.

Cost

Advizr retails for $125 per calendar month per counselor including the aggregation and client portal, with diverse discounts bachelor.

• 15% discount for advisor associated with certain custodians and banker-dealers such as TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, and Pershing.
• For 3 advisors: $118.75 per advisor
• For 10 advisors: $112.50
• For 50 advisors: $106.25

Score

Advizr earned a solid score of 35.0 out of xl.0. The app shone in the User Experience and Balance Sheet categories and achieved solid marks in the other categories.

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Which is the Best Financial Planning Software?

While all four of these applications have compelling benefits and features, eMoney Advisor, Naviplan and Advizr are more sophisticated products when information technology comes to the ability to analyze cash flows and perform sophisticated assay of estate, retirement and instruction-funding planning using this data (with the offset ii able to provide a greater level of granularity in this regard than Advizr). This doesn't imply by any means that MoneyGuidePro isn't a robust planning application, just that it isn't as targeted towards high-end advisors with upper-market HNW clientele who are seeking this type of assay.

Advisors working with more than middle-market clients, who don't require the extremely detailed cash period analysis capability of eMoney Advisor or Naviplan may observe MGP or Advizr (which offers less detailed cash flow capabilities than the first ii apps) are better fits for their practices. These two applications feature easy-to-use functionality that brand information technology simple for both the counselor and client to speedily understand the fiscal concepts being presented. MoneyGuidePro has the reward of offering the best integrations on the marketplace, although the other apps are no slouches in this regard either.

Both Naviplan and Advizr benefit from having extremely intuitive interfaces and reporting functionality, making them industry leaders in this regard in our view. However, eMoney Advisor and MoneyGuidePro have made contempo updates to their software to improve its usability. Thus, the slight advantage offered by Naviplan and Advizr in this area is not necessarily decisive. With more all-encompassing feature sets than the other 2 competitors, eMoney Advisor and MoneyGuidePro continue to exist compelling solutions for the coin, making it difficult to anoint a clear leader among these apps.

When considering fiscal planning software for financial advisors, both eMoney Advisor and Naviplan are splendid solutions for upper-level-AUM advisors, while MoneyGuidePro is ideal for the conventional wealth manager, with Advizr able to serve as a good fit for either type of advisor depending on the situation.

Honorable Mentions

There are a number of other applications that didn't brand the cut that we wanted to mention:

• FinanceLogix from Envestnet (SeeFinPlan Shootout: Finance Logix Review)
• MoneyTree – They offer a number of different packages depending on your needs and firm size. You tin can notice a recent review hither.
• RightCapital – Some other (relatively) new histrion that launched their product in September 2015.  Recently secured $i.six meg in seed funding and merits to accept over 800 clients.  According to Michael Kitces, their goal is to deliver theanalytical depth of tax-sensitive tools like NaviPlan and MoneyTree, just congenital inside a new and modern user interface.
• RetireUp – Offers back up for annuities in retirement income planning.

Have Questions Almost Engineering? Contact Us!

Email us at Consulting@EzraGroupLLC.com if your house has questions or needs advice on your current technology infrastructure or future technology strategy. Ezra Group has the experienced staff and deep knowledge base of operations to guide you through the complex and constantly-shifting technology environment.

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Craig's Note: In order to avoid any conflict of interest while writing product reviews, we setup a Chinese Wall between our consulting work and our blogging. In this case, Advizr is a consulting client of Ezra Grouping, then nosotros took peachy pains to maintain separation betwixt the two areas.

Josh (the author of this commodity) is an independent contractor who was paid merely to write this review and has no noesis or involvement with our consulting business organisation. In fact, if he is reading this annotation, this is the first time he is being made aware that ane of the vendors is, in fact, a consulting client of ours.

And while I did edit this article, it was only for grammer and readability.  I did not change or influence any of the vendors' pros/cons, strengths/weaknesses or final scores. Those were solely decided on past Josh.

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Source: https://wealthtechtoday.com/2017/10/25/4-top-financial-planning-software-apps-advisors/

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