Dynamic Planner has launched a new version of its cashflow planning service as part of its vision to enable advice firms to "power more advice".
The risk profiling business announced today (November 3) it has created a “powerful yet quick and easy to use” service to help advice firms link a client and their portfolio to a cash flow plan which accurately projects a client’s future finances alongside their capacity for risk.
Ben Goss, Dynamic Planner’s chief executive, told FTAdviser the launch was part of the firm’s ongoing goal to “enable advice firms to power advice to more than half the population”.
He said: “We believe that if cashflow is powerful and easy to use, then it can be made available to the many and not the few.
“This process can now take advisers minutes, not hours, so many more people can benefit from having a plan and understand what they need to do.”
The tool works alongside Dynamic Planner’s existing risk profiling tools, meaning clients’ risk capacity and real assets are used within the model and advisers do not need to manually enter growth assumptions.
According to Dynamic Planner, the tool will also assist advisers to demonstrate investment suitability. Through the model, advisers can adjust different metrics — retirement age, level of income, different portfolios — to explain to the client, and the regulator, why a certain retirement option had been chosen.
The tool uses real-time Monte Carlo modelling risk-based cash flows calculated on a monthly basis.
At the end of the process, it provides a suitability report which outlines the reasons for the end result.
Earlier this year the Financial Conduct Authority began its crackdown on retirement income advice, asking firms for data and looking at potential conflicts of interest in the sector.
Mr Goss said: “At the heart of what advisers told us they needed was to clearly show that they were working hand in glove with the FCA’s stance on demonstrating suitability.
“Using our cash flow enables them to do this through our asset risk model, in combination with real-time, risk-based cash flows.”
Mr Goss added that the tool had been designed specifically to fix the problems advisers had with existing cashflow tools.
He said: “There are two big issues we hear from advisers about cashflow planning. They say the tools are either easy to use, but do not capture the complexity of a client’s situation, or they are very sophisticated but extremely difficult to use.
“We feel we’ve made something easy to use but very powerful.”
imogen.tew@ft.com
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