Snowball signs-up with Xplan

Listed financial group Snowball will integrate Xplan software into its financial planning subsidiary CIS Financial Services, ahead of an anticipated influx of business generated from the recent passing of the superannuation choice bill in Federal Parliament.

The system will be installed in a staged roll-out over several months, and according to Snowball managing director Tony McDonald will provide enhanced client services and management reporting capability.

“If you want to achieve profitability in this sector, you must have high productivity levels. And to reach these levels you need very tight process control, which means relying heavily on the quality of your systems,” McDonald says.

“Now with choice about to be added to the equation we also believe that now is the time to ensure we can deal with increased traffic and client requirements,” he says.

Xplan national sales and marketing manager Jason Hoang says Snowball needed to integrate a more comprehensive core system.

“The financial planning world is about to become more demanding,” Hoang says.

For Xplan, the deal follows hot on the heels of recent signings with research house Standard and Poor’s to offer its reports and ratings and its adoption of FinaMetrica’s risk profiling system.

In April Snowball announced the launch of a wrap offering to the market following a deal with Asgard to badge the latter’s eWrap service, with McDonald saying the Xplan deal continues the firm’s mandate to develop specialised processes.