INGhas signed Xplan to enhance its online financial planning business support tool, Adviser Advantage, to add features that will allow advisers to more easily provide a simple Statement of Advice (SOA) in situations where a full SOA is not needed.
“The new service is for limited advice plans, which is a big issue with advisers now,” ING executive director, sales and marketing Dan Powell said.
“A lot of the advisers are saying, ‘how do we service clients who need limited advice?’. This refers to items such as small rollovers, small inheritances, and savings plans.
“The new capability will allow them to service their customers with these needs in a cost effective manner and make a margin, without having to put together a full financial plan,” he explained.
The new functionality, which consists of a simplified version of Xplan’s financial planning software, was customised by EvolveLogic and is the first step in ING’s move to use software specialists to further develop its online services for its advisers.
“The main thing about the dynamics of this arrangement is we’re not trying to be the builder of the new service. We’ve gone for best-of-breed because we think that if you try and build your own software you go from being a platform provider with back-end capability to saying ‘we’re front-end specialists’,” Powell said.
The new service portal will be launched in April and will be trialled at no cost for 12 months by 300 advisers. The advisers chosen will be able to access the software via the ING website.
Powell said the enhancement signalled ING’s intentions to make even greater improvements to Adviser Advantage down the track.
