Planners shun specialist software

While VisiPlan has emerged as the most widely used financial planning software in Australia, Microsoft supremo Bill Gates would be heartened to know that a hefty proportion of Australian planners simply rely on Microsoft’s Office suite.

According to survey data compiled by Wealth Insights as part of its Adviser Market Trends Report, not only do large numbers of Australian planners nominate Microsoft Office as their primary and secondary software, a remarkable 66 per cent of those people are happy using what is widely regarded as a fairly generic offering.

Indeed, when it comes to satisfaction with the software planners are using, AdviserNet emerges with the highest number of satisfied customers, followed by Microsoft Office, Count’s Wealth Planner, Xplanner and ProPlanner.

And the bad news for the software manufacturers and re-sellers is that financial planners are exhibiting a remarkable reluctance to change the way they do things, with 50 per cent of survey respondents saying they would be “very unlikely” to change their primary software in the next 12 months, with a further 27 per cent saying they are “unlikely”.

Indeed, only 15 per cent of respondents said they were either likely or very likely to change.

The managing director of Wealth Insights, Vanessa McMahon, said the survey reflected the response of 892 financial planners, and she expressed surprise at the popularity of the Microsoft offering.

“Microsoft Office has more advisers using it than many other dedicated software packages on the market, which presents a great opportunity for financial planning software manufacturers,” she said.

She said that there was still considerable movement in the software space, with 20 per cent of advisers having taken up a new financial planning software package in the past 12 months, and 15 per cent expecting to change software in the next 12 months.

The Wealth Insights research has also revealed some interesting changes in market share for financial planning software providers, with VisiPlan maintaining its dominance with 24 per cent primary usage, but falling slightly from its 29 per cent share in 2005, while Xplan has doubled its market share from 8 per cent in 2005 to 16 per cent.

Similarly, the Macquarie-backed Coin has grown from a mere 2 per cent of the market in 2005 to 11 per cent today, while AMP’s MoneyWise has held ground at 10 per cent market share.