Adviser efficiency driving technology
Adviser efficiency has been confirmed as the key driver of planning technology development, according to the latest Investment Trends Planning Software report, which has seen IRESS' XPLAN cement its position as the top-rated application.
The report, details of which were released today, confirmed that XPLAN had emerged as the top-rated financial planning application in 2015, achieving the highest score recorded in the ten years of the Investment Trends Planning Software Report.
Investment Trends said XPLAN had been followed by Rubik COIN and AdviserNETgain, with the top rated Hybrid planning/platform application being AdviserNETgain and Asgard.
Investment Trends technology analyst, Ian Webster, said XPLAN had cemented its position due to its continued development of a full range of planning services for dealer groups, from private wealth to robo-advice.
"XPLAN is leading the way for all comprehensive and component planning applications by offering the engine to support a new generation of multi-channel applications," he said.
The Investment Trends research also pointed to the manner in which technology had moved ahead in the superannuation space, noting that superannuation fund intra-fund advice technology had emerged from a previous generation of Australian fintech developers, led by Rubik Provisio and Decimal.
Webster said the deployment of Decimal at Mercer and QSuper represented a significant milestone for intra-fund advice technology.
"Decimal has demonstrated that enterprise grade intra-fund advice functionality should be deployed alongside super administration platforms," he said.
The Investment Trends 2015 innovation award went to Infocus Platformplus for analytics using peer benchmarking to promote best practice.
Webster said adviser efficiency represented a key driver of planning technology development.
"New fintech automated investment portfolio services are influencing functionality development for comprehensive planning applications," he said.
"Both XPLAN and AdviserLogic have introduced planner directed automated product replacement functionality to improve efficiency and support multi-channel advice services delivery."
Webster said the other significant advice functionality development in 2015 was the use of new insurance data to create a single comparison market for group and retail insurance products.
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