IRESS’s acquisition of financial planning content provider Innergi is aimed at helping advisers engage more effectively with clients across a variety of mediums – including cartoons and caricatures.
The deal will provide advisers using XPLAN – which is owned by IRESS – with access to ready-made e-newsletter templates along with articles, videos and structured learning modules. The new functionalities will be rolled out in its next major release in August 2015.
XPLAN is the dominant provider of financial planning software in Australia, with around 60 per cent market share, according to Vigilante. A 2014 study from Investment Trends found it held 53 per cent of primary relationships with planners, ahead of Rubik-owned Coin (23 per cent) and Midwinter (8 per cent).
“We have had quite a few clients come to us with the requirement for content, in order to enhance their websites and to engage with their clients via online content,” says Tizzy Vigilante, IRESS managing director – wealth management, Australia and New Zealand.
While the new addition will make XPLAN the only software provider to offer such a service, Vigilante insists this is not just a way to stay ahead of its competitors. “It’s all about looking at our solutions, what we offer our clients to enhance the XPLAN offer.”
While declining to divulge how many practices use its software, she says the number is in the thousands, ranging from independent and non-aligned practices through to those that are institutionally owned.
The whole package
Robert Skinner, managing director of Innergi, says its delivery of integrated content, from articles and e-newsletters through to online animations and video – is its point of difference. “Others out there provide bits and pieces, but not the whole integrated package.”
He says all its content starts at the writing stage, for instance, a written script forms the starting point for the videos. Innergi engages the services of writers, IT providers and clients services, with a team of around five people including staff and contractors. One of these is Andrew Fyfe, whose distinctive hand-drawn caricatures and sketches featured in popular TV show Hey Hey It’s Saturday during the 1980s and 1990s (pictured).
A former financial planner himself, Skinner and his team have spent nine years building the business. “It’s our fourth version, we have a lot of content in there, it gets signed off externally. For [other software providers] to catch up to where we are, it would be a mammoth job,” he says.
While there are a number of specialist content providers and freelance writers in the marketplace, including journalists left behind by struggling newspaper publishers, Skinner believes his financial planning background sets Innergi apart in this sector.
This helps in matching the content to its application. “I also used to lecture in financial planning at the Graduate School of Management up here in Newcastle, teaching people about financial concepts,” he says.
An IRESS competitor contacted by Professional Planner declined to comment on the acquisition.
