Greg Dunger
ING-owned dealer group RetireInvest has signed a heads of agreement with IRESS Market Technology that will see its authorised representatives switch from using VisiPlan to Xplan for their financial planning software needs.
The decision comes after RetireIn_vest scrutinised its incumbent soft_ware provider VisiPlan along with the Macquarie-owned Coin and Xplan late last year.
“We went through a very extensive process [that involved] a number of our advisers, our key staff within our franchise offices, along with some of our own staff who are paraplanners that were currently working with Visi_Plan internally within RetireInvest, looking at each application,” RetireInvest managing director Greg Dunger said.
“The end result from an adviser perspective was that nine out of 10 actually chose Xplan as the appro_priate software package to meet the needs of their business,” he explained.
According to Dunger, the dealer group wanted to finalise its decision towards the end of last year but delayed this step when speculation arose in the market that IRESS, the owner of Xplan, was about to pur_chase VisiPlan from IWL.
RetireInvest did so on the grounds that it wanted to ensure a transition of data from one software provider to another was as smooth as possible, and to have the new provider and the incumbent eventually owned by the same company would potentially help achieve this.
The rollout of Xplan to RetireIn_vest advisers is planned to commence in August this year and the process is expected to take 12 months to complete.
“We will do a few at a time based on the capacity IRESS has to rollout to our practices,” Dunger said.
“What we’re calling for is which of our practices want to go onto the sys_tem early versus later on, and again that depends on their own business. We’ve already had quite a number say they’re happy to go sooner than later,” he said.
After the data for each office is transferred onto the new system, advisers will receive two days training before beginning their live use of Xplan.
Dunger said the dealer group is expecting a minimum increase in productivity of 20 per cent from its practices, as the new system stands to reduce the number of manual func_tions currently having to be performed by advisers.
RetireInvest is plan_ning to purchase between 350 and 400 software licences across the group, and has actually man_aged to reduce its soft_ware spending via the new deal.
“It’s actually slightly more commercial from our perspective, and I think that is because the size of our group has enabled us to negotiate a good commercial rate with IRESS,” Dunger said.
