Technology provider AdviserLogic has added new security and compliance features to its financial planning-focused software offering.
This enables advisers to easily compare products and make client-led recommendations that meet client best interests provisions, particularly when creating statements of advice and client needs analyses.
“If you can take down those barriers to compliance by making it simple to use, then you end up with a more compliant adviser. That’s what we’re all about – software that makes it easier to be compliant,” says Daniel Gara, AdviserLogic’s head of product development.
“We provide the tools to improve their advice and their ability to advise clients and ensure that they’re able to produce compliant documents quickly and efficiently.”
The document generation process starts with the fact-find, and then flows into needs analysis. “The next step is a transfer quote, where you can push all the client and policy data out to insurance software,” Gara adds.
Specialist risk advisers
Risk-focused financial planners are an important target market for the technology company, who are serviced through its RiskLogic tool. This enables advisers to compare various insurance products and to generate quotes on premiums.
According to Gara, the company received particularly strong interest from this segment of the market at the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) conference, which ended on Tuesday.
“Advisers have been asking us for that. We’re giving them information in a way that makes sense,” he says, though emphasises it also services financial planning generalists.
An alternative to Xplan, Coin
Gara says the company works primarily with independent and non-aligned financial advisers.
“Xplan and Coin…have a different focus. Ours is on the user experience, whereas theirs is at the institutional level.”
Though he emphasises “we don’t discount the importance of that”.
AdviserLogic quotes on most of the major insurers. All the major risk offerings in the Australian market are represented. This includes AIA, AMP, Asteron, BT Financial Group, Comminsure, OnePath, TAL and Zurich.
“We’re then able to generate quotes on insurance, to compare policies against each other, to see the research. Advisers can judge how they differ, and why one is better than the other for individual clients,” Gara says.
“We’ve had a really good response at the conference. There seems to be a lot of activity in the industry. A lot of people are reassessing their software.”
Recognising the large numbers of legacy client books in the financial planning space, the AdviserLogic is also planning to launch an insurance legacy product comparison tool. Gara says this is due to launch by early 2015.
Two-factor authentication will also be added, which he compares to the mobile phone text message users receive when making a new online banking transaction.
Licensee Console
“We’ve launched and are putting a lot more effort into our Licensee Console. It’s giving the dealer groups the ability to do remote compliance audits, to assess data across various practices, to make templates,” Gara says.
“This gives each practice the ability to tailor it themselves, and to add extra features onto that across all the offices. We give them the best of both worlds.”
