Ask any IFA what takes up the most significant chunk of their day-to-day operations, and they’ll likely say client management. Trying to manually manage your clients’ finances, planning, financial adjustments, and your relationships with them can quickly snowball into an operational nightmare.
Digitalisation and automation of your client management processes is the fastest, easiest way to regain control of your time and productivity. Financial planning software has become an indispensable part of any adviser’s toolkit for scaling and driving growth without sacrificing the quality and efficiency of your services.
However, building the right financial advisor software tech stack that suits your operational needs and requirements can be daunting. There seems to be a digital solution for almost anything these days, and hype around trends can often trump applicability and practicality.
Combine that with so many available options, and choosing the right planning tools can quickly become daunting!
In this article, we’ll be taking a closer look at things to consider when selecting the best financial planning software for your financial advisory business.
Tips for choosing the right financial adviser software for your needs
Selecting the right financial planning and management software will help you streamline your relationship, portfolio management and other tasks, freeing up your time to focus on delivering greater value in your services that will benefit your clients.
The critical thing to remember here is that not all tools will be right for what you do. Wealth management, cash flow, business intelligence and relationship management all sound relevant but might not align with your service specialisation or clientele upon closer inspection.
Before committing to any software solutions, it’s worthwhile asking yourself a few key questions to decide what kind of tools would your advisory services most benefit from:
What are my clients’ needs?
The first step to finding the right financial planning software is identifying and understanding your client’s needs. Consider your client niche (if you have one) and their primary goals and interests. Understanding their needs will help you determine what services you should be elevating and enhancing through financial planning tools.
What are my clients’ preferences?
It’s equally important to understand how your leads and clients prefer to engage with you and your services. Some may prefer to receive a static, quarterly report or statement of their investments and assets, while others may prefer the freedom and flexibility of being able to log in whenever they choose and view their portfolio in real time.
Is the software device agnostic and easy to use?
There’s no set rule for this, but it’s generally best practice to select financial planning tools that are intuitive, easy to use and supported on different platforms and devices.
Cloud-based wealth management tools are ideal because they’re usually accessible across most devices and from any place, giving you the freedom and flexibility to run your operations from anywhere.
Different types of financial planning software
Portfolio Management Software
Portfolio management software tracks and analyses all investments within your portfolio. It tracks overall portfolio performance, individual investment values, identifies investment potential, makes recommendations and simplifies reporting.
For financial advisers, this software is useful for seamless tracking and monitoring of all investments within a client’s portfolio and makes managing multiple portfolios easier.
Financial Planning Software
Financial planning software aggregates and centralises all of a client’s financial data in a secure platform, allowing it to track and monitor transactions and exchanges and create a holistic financial picture for the client.
From there, advisers can use the insights generated from this data to make specialised and tailored recommendations to help them reach their financial goals.
Commission Management Software
For advisers who operate entirely, or even partially, on a commission basis, managing incoming commission streams can quickly become time-consuming, taking their attention away from their core advisory services.
Commission management software automates and streamlines commission tracking and management. Commspace, for example, provides automatic data aggregation and centralisation, advanced revenue analytics and personalised reporting.
CRM Software
Customer relationship management (CRM) software allows IFAs and advisory firms to track all client interactions, from leads to long-established clientele. CRM tools automate communication workflows and ensure client inquiries and messages are handled timeously, and issues are resolved as quickly as possible.
It also consolidates all client data, so advisers can identify their needs and make faster, more tailored recommendations and solutions unique to their requirements.
Conclusion
No matter whether you offer general or specialised advisory services, you can reap the benefits of automation through financial planning software. The critical takeaway is identifying which wealth management tools will most benefit your operations to get the best possible ROI and enhance the value of your advisory services.
