At the heart of any successful business are great client relationships, which is why I want to share with you some of the amazing successes firms are having with Dynamic Planner – using it to take engagement with their clients to the next level, while removing huge amounts of time, cost and risk in the process. For many, adopting of Dynamic Planner is proving transformational.
It has now been 12 months since we first launched our new, £5m upgrade, Dynamic Planner Elements. At the time, we said it was a three-year journey for us and that we would be delivering a series of incremental upgrades to enhance your firm’s financial planning experience. And that is what we have done.
Our first major upgrade was a new, MiFID II-compliant review process, which we deliberately designed with your client interactions in mind. Now, over 1,000 reviews a month – and rising every month – are being delivered in Dynamic Planner by firms as more realise the step change in quality of output and engagement you can generate.
An informed and engaged client is the clear objective, but completing the review process efficiently and in a manner that minimises risk is key to sustained success. Firms have continuously reported a reduction in time spent preparing reviews with Dynamic Planner. Savings of an hour to savings of over five hours per review are common.
One system for all your financial planning needs
Our purpose at Dynamic Planner is to enable you to match people with suitable portfolios through engaging financial planning. One of the principal challenges that stands in the way of achieving this, with sufficient levels of suitability and efficiency, is the currently fragmented landscape of financial planning technology.
The use of multiple tools in the financial planning space generates not just the scope for miscalibration around suitability, but inefficiencies and risks around rekeying. It is also hard to demonstrate your professionalism when your firm is cutting and pasting from multiple sources to produce a client document.
This fragmented landscape is a structural challenge for the industry, often born of the complexities of 20th century products, practices and tax laws. Risk profiling, portfolio analytics, asset allocation, product research, investment research, pension switching, cash flow and reporting – all of these have their own ecosystem of tools, few of which talk to each other and all of which have their own definition of risk.
This is not a sustainable approach for the future, so we are investing in Dynamic Planner to deliver you one system for all your financial planning needs.
By the time we are finished, Dynamic Planner will enable you to: review a client’s risk profile, current situation, portfolio and ensure suitability; research and identify compatible platforms, products and investments for your target market, based on their risk characteristics and appropriate features and costs; and build goal and risk-based cash flows to answer key client questions and successfully plan their futures.
Understanding risk is at the heart of great financial planning
Great financial planning is about engaging with a client to help them build a view of the future and a plan which they really buy into. It requires a robust assessment of both the client’s situation and the investments needed in order to achieve their objectives, with a shared understanding between the client and the adviser of the risks involved.
Without that assessment and a consistent definition of risk throughout the planning process – from risk profiling the client, building a cash flow and researching and constructing the portfolio – you run the risk of sub-optimal outcomes. The good news is that Dynamic Planner uses a consistent definition of risk throughout this process.
For the 10th year running, we have published the outcomes of our risk profiles and they have, again, performed as expected with assets invested in the target benchmarks experiencing incrementally lower levels of volatility from Risk Profile 10 down to Risk Profile 1.
Clients though do not invest for the risk, they invest for the return, so what is particularly reassuring again this year is the strength of returns produced by the benchmark allocations associated with each risk profile.
Last year, MSCI launched the Dynamic Planner indices – regulated multi asset benchmarks – which are now available for you in Dynamic Planner, to aid your selection of and illustrate the performance of multi asset portfolios. The benchmark for Risk Profile 5 for example has delivered comparable returns to the UK market since launch at considerably lower volatility. It has also outperformed the IA Mixed Asset Sector 40-85%.
Our aim is to help you demonstrate your value in the advice process by delivering good returns for a given risk level, as well as ensuring suitability. Our independent asset risk model is a uniquely powerful benchmark to help you show this.
We will help you make the most of Dynamic Planner as one financial planning system and in the process help you take both your client relationships and your business to the next level.
Want to find out more and how Dynamic Planner can help support your firm? Request A Demo today.
