Your IndustryMar 21 2016

Tech spotlight: Ooooh, shiny

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Tech spotlight: Ooooh, shiny

It seems to me that financial technology in this space in particular is stagnating a bit. That’s despite all the Shoreditch hipster #fintech nonsense, which is a bubble and will go away fairly soon once all the wannabes work out that they are not going to get bought for bajillions.

The stagnation might be explained by the fact that there don’t seem to be any easy builds any more. The news (which is breaking as I write) that Old Mutual Wealth is planning to spend £450m on its new platform implementation, which is slated for 2018, is a handy illustration of that point. If we assume that figure will shift (up, always up) in the next couple of years, we are looking at a system to buy, hold and sell assets that costs half a billion quid. Half a billion. That’s even more than the editor’s typical bar bill at the Money Management Awards.

Anyway, in light of all this I am particularly chuffed to have two new bits of kit to write about this month.

Two new versions

Voyant, the cashflow planning powerhouse, has launched a new web-only version of its adviser system called Voyant Adviser Go, which looks good. And 7IM has extended its much-admired 7IMagine reporting tool, adding a financial planning element called My Future. So let’s dive into both and have some fun.

Adviser Go

Voyant first. Adviser Go is a web-only adjunct to the main Voyant Adviser system. It behaves itself nicely on tablets (and probably phones, but it’s hard to see anyone using it in front of a client on a 4 inch screen). Data syncs across both, so if you create a plan in Go then you will be able to see it in your full Voyant Adviser system back at the ranch.

The Go tool isn’t as functionally rich as the main Voyant system, but that means the developers have been able to make it more visual and (almost) fun to get the inputs in place for building the plan. That matters more than you might think – I am a huge fan of Voyant (and its rivals), but its flexibility and power inevitably means that you trade a bit of fun along the way. I still know many advisers who lack the confidence to use Voyant live in front of clients, preferring to print down cashflow graphs and go through them on hard copy, much to chief operating officer Bob Freeman’s frustration, I expect.

Go will help with that – it is easily flexible enough to create simple plans on the fly (assuming you have a decent internet connection; all of Go happens in the cloud) and I can easily imagine a vibrant and highly interactive client discussion with lots of playing around with scenarios. Once that’s done, it is relatively simple for the adviser to then create the fuller, more complex plan on the full Voyant Adviser system in his or her own time.

The heart of Go remains the same as the main Voyant system; the team has not thrown out the baby with the bathwater. Come to think of it, has anyone ever seen a baby get thrown out with bathwater? It seems unlikely. Whatever the case, I think the Voyant guys have walked a very credible and clever line between freshening things up for a touch-friendly, simplified environment while not freaking existing users out, many of whom have invested heavily in learning the full-fat system.

I think Go could make cashflow planning much more real for many clients, and a future where they can log in themselves and play around with their adviser being able to see what they’ve been up to can not be far off.

My Future

I said this month’s column would be a pleasure, and so it is as we now turn to 7IM’s ‘My Future’ extension to 7IMagine.

When it launched, 7IMagine was not so much a breath of fresh air as a hurricane. From an industry perspective, it did not actually do all that much, but what it did, it did with real style. Even its genesis, from a 7IM client who was fed up with boring client reporting and who happened to have a storied history in video game design, was a welcome break from the norm.

In the couple of years since 7IMagine hit the streets, many providers have invested heavily in client engagement and there is a huge range of great reporting tools and apps.

No, wait, that’s not true. What’s actually happened is that client reporting remains workaday at best and simply embarrassing all too often. If we ever wanted to clear up the debate about who benefits from platforms, we should just look at the end client engagement.

Tablet use

Anyway, My Future extends the look and feel of 7IMagine into the financial planning space, and gives individuals a simplified tool with which to take a look at what their future financial situation might hold.

It is designed for tablet; you need the screen real estate for it to have any impact. So there is an iPad version, an Android version, and a Microsoft Surface version in the pipeline too.

In terms of what My Future does, it is not a full-on cashflow tool like Voyant, but nor is it a spreadsheet on steroids. Inputs are limited – a bit like Voyant Go – but are controlled by the user via a drag-and-drop system, which is really engaging and nice to use.

Many assumptions are baked in; this not only stops spurious accuracy (more in a second on that) by geeks, but also allows the system to be updated fast for changing tax rates, inflation conditions and so on. The technical stuff is supplied by Tony Wickenden’s Technical Connections team, so good luck in arguing the toss over interpretations of tax rules with those guys. The adviser version gives a bit more control, but not to Voyant levels.

It would be possible to criticise My Future for not being completely accurate, but that would be missing the point. At no point does the system tell you what to do. It stops at the water’s edge of highlighting the issue that you may have, and in this way attempts to drive demand for financial planning.

It is for this reason – and for brand kudos too – that 7IM makes the system available free on your favourite app store whether or not you are a client. In future My Future may pull real life data from your 7IM platform account if you have one, but it doesn’t even do that just now.

The design – well, it’s lovely. Precious Blue Dot, the agency behind it, is working exclusively with 7IM in the financial services space and, based on what we have seen so far it is a collaboration that’s working really well.

Two directions

So there you have it – two systems or developments that inhabit the same space, but come at it from different directions.

Both, though, are designed with users in mind and have started to take advantage of the design possibilities inherent in a touch-based environment.

Both systems are excellent in their own way, and it would be really nice to see some other developers taking 7IM in particular on at its own game and levelling up (a video game reference there, you’re welcome) the whole sector in terms of what a client can hope to experience when they trust their money to us lot.

More please.

Mark Polson is principal of platform and specialist consultancy the lang cat