Navigator to roll out revised software at no cost
Financialservices groupAvivaand its platform business Navigator are to roll out the group’s revised PlanIt Financial planning software and will consider giving it to planners at no cost.
Aviva chief executive Alan Griffths says the group has yet to finalise a time for the free rollout, but says given the growth of planning software providers, it was a likely future move.
“Financial planning software is a commodity and it is fast-becoming something you give away. The old PlanIt cost $2 million a year to maintain. We have brought that down to $700,000 a year, at which point you can afford to give it away,” Griffiths says.
Aviva has been upgrading the Navigator financial planning software for the past six years with varying degrees of success. PlanIt was rolled out in 2001, but had to be withdrawn less than a year later after being criticised by advisers as unworkable.
However, Griffiths pulled any further development on PlanIt when he became chief executive in March last year, but then gave resposibility in May for the completion of the software revision to Dr Sharam Hekmat, who built Navigator’s Singapore platform.
“There were reasons for stopping development. Firstly, we were trying to deliver software that was trying to satisfy everybody’s needs. That would not work.”
Griffiths says he passed on the project to Hekmat because he hadn’t missed a deadline and “he built the Singapore software and N-Link on-time so I gave him the job of building PlanIt”.
Navigator has been rolling out PlanIt modules since October last year and the new version is simpler to use, Griffiths says.
“We are now only trying to satisfy 80 per cent of a planner’s needs and where they want a specialist service, we will build the links to that. Previously, we tried to develop that [remaining] 20 per cent of needs which was very expensive,” Griffiths says.
Currently investor reporting, account information, investor grouping, online publications and online transactions are live, while adviser reporting and share trading are still in development.
Griffiths says the roll-out of PlanIt will be low-key and he has been receiving compliments from planners on the new software.
“This is a change from the complaints we used to receive a year ago. I am now confident we can blow the competitors out of the water.”
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