Get the Financial Planning 2008 Software Survey

Financial Planning magazine conducts an annual survey of its readers to gauge the different types of technology in use by financial planners and advisers.  2008 marks the second year of the survey, and Joel P. Bruckenstein published an overview of the results and a comparison to last year’s survey information.

Click here to view Bruckenstein’s review of Financial Planning’s 2008 Software Survey.

Here’s my 30-second take if you don’t have time to read the entire review:

  • 350 people responded to the survey, up 46% from the prior year.
  • 25% said they use Microsoft Outlook as their CRM, but Outlook is not a real CRM program.
  • Advisers are slow to adopt web-based CRM (e.g. Salesforce, Redtail, EZ-Data, etc.).  Many must still be skeptical over security issues with hosted software and sensitive data, or perhaps they demand 99.9% uptime without the risk of the Internet going down for a day (darn you Comcast!!).
  • MoneyGuidePro is the most popular financial planning package with 23%, but a full 11% don’t use anything.
  • Albridge Solutions and Schwab PortfolioCenter are popular portfolio management programs, but 28% don’t use anything (probably because the respondents don’t manage money; they just make plans).
  • 75% don’t use any account aggregation software at all (e.g. ByAllAccounts, CashEdge).  There’s HUGE opportunity for leverage here.
  • Paperless office and document storage systems are almost non-existent for the majority of respondents.  Another HUGE opportunity to turn advisers on to the beauty of zonal OCR, full-text indexing, and automated filing of scans and electronic documents.  Easier said than done, though, I must admit.
  • Barely anybody uses rebalancing software (but applications like iRebal and Tamarac are very expensive for small firms with trading volume under 1,500 or so trades/year).

More of my comments will come later as I digest this survey along with other recent technology reports.

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