New software raises stakes to the clouds
Planners will be spoilt for choice as the battle for financial planning software moves from the desktop to the cloud, with new entrant OpenWealth set to launch an online planning software platform at the end of this month.
The new offering does not draw on a desktop heritage, with chief executive Ali Hosseini stating that the growth of online and cloud computing has made desktop planning software outdated.
The platform has been in development for 18 months and is currently in use with two AMP Financial Planning licensees, Invest Blue and Cornerstone Financial Group, who were also involved in the development of the platform.
Hosseini said OpenWealth uses Salesforce.com customer relationship management (CRM) tools overlaid with purpose-built financial planning tools in an effort to provide a lower-cost platform that meets financial planners' Future of Financial Advice requirements.
"Rather than build a CRM we have opted to use a leading third party provider from whom we can enhance capacity and add functions as clients need them, while we focus on building scalable and portable planner tools," Hosseini said.
As a result, Hosseini said OpenWealth would charge planners about half the current price of other providers, setting its fees at about $100 per user per month, with higher fees charged for planners who opted to use more complex portfolio modelling and reporting tools.
Planners could also opt to add human resources and staff management modules to manage their own businesses, with all aspects of OpenWealth — including fact-finds, risk profiling, needs analysis and document generation — available online and via Apple mobile devices.
OpenWealth launches into a market which is not short on competition, with seven product providers offering eight different planning software packages to financial planners.
Investment Trends senior analyst Recep Peker said Iress, Rubik and Midwinter are the current leading providers with their Xplan, Coin and Reasonable Basis packages, respectively.
Peker said software providers had developed very highly evolved products. At present they were competing to offer software that deals with single-issue advice, as part of the wider industry's efforts to deliver this advice in a cost-effective manner for clients and advisers.
Online and cloud-based financial planning software has recently become the focus for software providers, with Midwinter last month announcing it has retooled its entire Reasonable Basis desktop software into an online offering called Adviser OS.
Iress has also made moves online with the rollout of Xplantouch to clients and financial planners, providing access to portfolio data and reports on a client's financial position.
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Jason Spits
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