Speaking to FTAdviser this week (March 22) on the back of its results, Neil Stevens, joint chief executive officer at Fintel, said it plans to launch the tool in the second half of the year.
Matt Timmins, joint CEO at Fintel, was also on the call and said that advisers need more help in dealing with complex client situations and a complicated market so Fintel is going to be investing in cash flow planning.
“We got some really good tools to help advisers give financial advice, and later this year, we'll bring out a cash flow planning tool. That brings them all together into one hub so advisers can do holistic advice, and then still access all of those specialist advice work streams that we've got.”
So far, he said Fintel has already launched income drawdown to help with retirement income planning, and an environmental, social and governance module.
“[This] helps advisers educate their clients about ESG, take their preferences, and then get out there and research the market with some impartial expert advice to pick the right products. We've been really strong in some of the specialist work streams; this year is about pulling that together and giving advisers that central hub for managing their clients.
“We believe in the market that there's way too many point systems. There are way too many individual systems that require advisers to individually log into different pieces of kit to get the job done for their clients and our aim is to provide everything the intermediary firm needs to do that through one access point.”
Fintel said the costs for this have not yet been decided but it will be an additional module offered to Centra and Engage users.
The firm saw a 5 per cent increase in total revenue up £2.9mn to £63.9mn for 2021.
Stevens said: “We definitely want to stay on track. You'll see what we've set out are medium term objectives so rather than just focusing on any particular year, we're talking about what we want to achieve over the next two or three years. It gives a good shape to our growth and it lets us focus on what we need to do for our customers in the right sort of sequence as well.”
Timmins said outside of financial expectations, the firm is also putting investment into the business to continue to build on its fintech system that it has through the acquisition of Defaqto.
“We're investing into that, building out new modules for the benefit of advisory firms,” he said. “As Neil said, we're growing our relationship with large enterprise clients who need more software and services which we're developing and so it's a case of working towards mid-term financial objectives and being in a good position to achieve those.
“It is also investing heavily into what the intermediaries are going to need over the next phase.”
sonia.rach@ft.com
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