Ray Adams, director of Niche Chartered Financial Planners, has over the past 10 years built up a suite of Excel spreadsheet calculators, including a cashflow-modelling tool.
Mr Adams said he decided to develop the software further a year ago after being disappointed with the cashflow software available to other advisers and planners
CashCalc took on two full-time software developers and after seven months of testing in house. the website was set up and made available nationwide.
He said: “When I looked at the providers I wasn’t wholeheartedly happy with any of them. We found them either too clunky or too simplistic.
“There are 25,000 advisers in the UK and 5,000 of them are using some kind of cashflow modelling software. I am genuinely not sure why the other 20,000 aren’t. They could be put off by complexity and costs.
“We wanted to have a service that was completely intuitive, meaning it is obvious what to do as soon as you open the program.”
It is free to sign up and use the basic CashCalc service. However, Mr Adams said he hoped a good proportion of the users would want to upgrade to the premium service where they can “bespoke brand” the output reports and use a range of other calculators, including level versus indexed annuity comparison and immediate versus deferred pension income.
Mr Adams said he had not launched the tool primarily to bring in money for the firm.
He said: “I am passionate about financial planning. The target is to have 10,000 users within two years. I would hope about 20 per cent of those will be paying users.”
Information: www.cashcalc.co.uk
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