This is a guest post by Shuang Chen, Co-founder and CEO at RightCapital In September 2015, we launched our next generation financial planning solution for financial advisors and their clients, which has garnered a great response and overwhelming support. We believe that we provide the ideal solution for financial advisors to offer their clients, and worked to create a very different product from what’s available in the marketplace. When we started two-and-a-half years ago, we thought the next generation of financial planning tools should be interactive and collaborative. Many years ago, advisers ran their software in the back office and presented reports to their clients. Clients would ask "what if I did this?" and advisors would have to rerun their reports. Every change brought new reports. Our thought was that if the adviser and client could interact, they could look at the screen and apps together, make changes, and see results on the fly. That's our core vision. We also thought financial planning should be a continual process. Rather than running changes and reports every six months, we offer client portals so when they go back home, they can see things happen immediately inside a very comprehensive data feed that covers financial transactions — loans, bank accounts, credit cards, and so on. We wanted the product to be interactive and collaborative, so we put a lot of resources into a very visual interface. Financial planning is complex, so if we can communicate and articulate results and reports clearly, that helps the advisors and their clients. Because many of our advisers serve Baby Boomers and people close to retirement, we're able to offer very comprehensive retirement planning analysis including detailed cash flow projections. We created an extensive social security optimization module, integrated with retirement Monte Carlo simulation. We also coded 90% of all federal income tax codes to help advisors deliver more robust retirement planning supported by thorough tax projections. Some advisors are also trying to reach younger generations of investors and this tool with its visual components makes it much more appealing to them. Millennials have high demands and expectations, and we need to make this easy to use on mobile devices. Lastly, many advisors recognize that their younger clients may need help with budgets or cash flows, so we created a budget function. Many current financial planning solutions don't offer budgeting, so advisers are finding this to be helpful when working with clients who need budgeting assistance. Envestnet | Yodlee Aggregation API has been a major part of our work, because it allows us to aggregate client’s financial data and offer a holistic view of their accounts. This enables advisors to gain a better understanding of their client’s financial situation and tailor recommendations and product offerings to meet their needs. When we started, we went through a very thorough vetting process, to make sure we were working with a provider with great coverage. We’re also concerned about security, so we looked at several solutions. We've been very happy with our integration with Envestnet | Yodlee API, and it has made a major difference in everything we've done. After just a few weeks after launching, we have a week-long waiting list of people who want to see a product demonstration. After two-and-a-half years, it is exciting to see our hard work start to pay off. If you’d like to learn more about RightCapital’s financial planning solution for advisors, visit our website to request a free trial.
