On today’s broadcast, Advizr launches its eponymous financial planning software. Will its easy-to-use interface win adoption from advisors? iQuantifi actually wants to be known as a robo advisor. Find out how soon you might be using this automated planning tool in your business. And, we’ve all seen our fair share of awful PowerPoint slides. Learn about the new app Microsoft is releasing that can inject some inspiration back into your presentations.
So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now.
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Before I get to the links to this week’s top stories, first answer this live poll:
Now here are the links to this week’s top stories:
Tech Review: Advizr’s New Planning Tool from Financial Planning Magazine
[This week’s top story comes from who else, Joel Bruckenstein, as he reviewed a new entrant to the financial planning software space called Advizr. In his November column for Financial Planning magazine, Bruckenstein offers an overview of Advizr’s easy to use interface, designed to make a financial plan from start to finish in about 20 to 30 minutes.
Now Advizr is not the most comprehensive planning software on the market, but that’s by design in order to make the data intake and plan calibration process as straightforward as possible. One desirable characteristic is that you can send a link to clients who then enter their own information into a plan using the Advizr wizard. Advizr automatically creates a preliminary financial plan for you that you can review, customize and tweak to create the finished plan along with action steps for clients.
Note: The new myMoneyGuide Lab from MoneyGuide Pro uses a similar strategy, so watch the video to learn more. And look for the chicken!] Over the past several years, few new players in the financial planning space have developed innovative software. Instead, innovation has mostly come from more established names, such as MoneyGuidePro, Finance Logix and Advicent (which makes NaviPlan). So it’s refreshing to see a small startup, Advizr, enter the fray with a somewhat fresh approach to financial planning.
Financial Advisor Becomes Robo-Advisor from Financial Advisor Magazine, and
The DoughRoller Podcast with @iQuantifi Founder Tom White
[Next up is news of another financial planning software solution called iQuantifi, but what makes iQuantifi different is that the company enthusiastically embraces the robo advisor moniker. I first connected with iQuantifi founder Tom White when he demoed an early version of his software at Finovate Spring 2012 in San Francisco.
Since then, White has made significant updates to the platform, attracted some early-stage venture capital, and just recently announced plans to introduce a version of iQuantifi for use by advisors.
But like Advizr that I mentioned earlier, White says that iQuantifi deals with “level one financial planning,” and not the complicated needs of high net worth investors. But for less than $100 a year for consumers, iQuantifi is an attractive bridge between the custom financial plans created by advisors for a few thousand dollars and no plan at all. Nevertheless, iQuantifi deserves a spot on your radar if you’re interested in delivering basic, scalable planning to emerging clients at an affordable price.] Tom White used to be a human financial advisor. Now he runs a fully automated virtual advisor called iQuantifi, and he’s embraced his new role. “We consider ourselves to be the only true robo advisor. We’re not afraid of that word because we’re here to help,” he said earlier this autumn during his allotted seven-minute presentation at Finovate, a conference in New York City showcasing the future of financial and banking technology.
Microsoft Is Sick Of PowerPoint, Too from Business Insider
[And finally, all this talk about financial plans makes me think of how you use presentations to convey information to clients. If you’re guilty of committing death by PowerPoint, there are a number of alternative tools out there like Prezi, SlideShark, and Haiku Deck, but Microsoft isn’t going to let those products take users away from it’s bread-and-butter presentation software.
So this week, Microsoft started offering preview invitations to Sway, a new app you can use to easily create elegant presentations that work across most devices. Sway is a web-based app that uses photos, videos, and files from your computer, social media accounts, YouTube, and cloud storage services. If you’re ready to migrate away from uninspiring PowerPoint templates but don’t want to leave the Microsoft ecosystem, Sway might just be the app you’re looking for.] We can’t even remember the last time we saw someone under 30 fire up a PowerPoint instead of a Prezi when giving a talk. Microsoft hopes to put the kibosh on that with Microsoft Sway, its new presentation app.
Here are the stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:
A Major Overhaul from Financial Advisor Magazine
There were a number of announcements that came out of the recently concluded Advent Connect conference, but the one that intrigued me was the news surrounding the next version of Black Diamond’s Blue Sky platform.
Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for November 21, 2014
