I have not used cash flow planning tools before, but I found it easy. It’s really good. It’s so easy to navigate your way around and move from one section to another. I haven’t found something it doesn’t do yet.
Clients are engaging with it well. I almost can’t wait to sit down with them properly, so they can start grabbing my laptop or iPad and moving the slider up and down the life phases saying, ‘What happens if I retire here? Or here?’ To have that engagement with a client is so important, 100%. It’s always how I have tried to work as a wealth adviser in my career.
I see that as the real plus point with Dynamic Planner’s cash flow – encouraging clients to grab my device and interact with it.
I do have limited experience from using a simple cash flow modelling tool from a provider in the past, but this is 100 times better. Now those same clients can really get involved and engage with the process. We knew Dynamic Planner’s new cash flow was going to be good, based on our experience using the Client Review report in Dynamic Planner, which has been so easy for us to use – and has saved us so much time at Lifetime completing reviews.
Yes, the fact that it uses the underlying assumptions in Dynamic Planner, for risk and returns, makes your life easier. You can then explain that to the client. It’s peace of mind definitely, knowing those assumptions are calculated for you.
Before I started using Dynamic Planner, I was using platforms when I was completing reviews, but they sometimes use different assumptions for different things, so it’s not uniform. In Dynamic Planner, you know it’s the same throughout and yes, we are definitely closer as a firm now to using one system to support us.
Yes, definitely, it’s been a great help in 2020 working remotely – particularly Dynamic Planner’s Portfolio Suitability Hub. If I’m talking to a client and we’re looking at a potential fund switch, it’s such an easy tool to use and run and map a fund comparison. That has been really useful and it all backs up your conversation with a client.
Why are you telling them to make a switch? Well, this is why: a, it’s expensive and b, it hasn’t performed this year. That’s all in the report for a client and Dynamic Planner produces a decent report.
Would you recommend Dynamic Planner – and its Cash flow – to a fellow advice firm?
Definitely. I’m on Dynamic Planner’s side here. I already have gone through and showed it to quite a few colleagues here at Lifetime. And people can always be hesitant to adopt something new – for example, with the Client Review report in Dynamic Planner. But I said, ‘You have to. It’s 100 times better than a report you would use from a provider. And it will make your life so much easier.’
For the new cash flow, what I’ve suggested at Lifetime is send the review report out to a client before a meeting, saying, ‘Look, this is where you are now. Where do you want to be in future?’ Then, in the meeting itself, we can hone in on the cash flow modelling, go through a client’s expenses and see where they will be and how long their money will last.
