SunGard Unveils Planning Tool

Eight financial planning concepts—including retirement planning, accumulation planning, asset allocation, cash/debt management, financial priorities and financial statements—are addressed and illustrated with charts and summary tables. The financial planning tool simplifies complex information and helps advisers make financial plans more meaningful to investors.

The tool is used collaboratively with an adviser’s clients to develop a basic financial plan. In a statement, SunGard said the solution is suitable for advisers who have resisted providing this service because of the complexity of the software tools available.

The tool is integrated with SunGard’s financial planning application WealthStation Financial Planning, so that firms can adapt to changing client needs as they become more complex, but is a single stand-alone application.

According to SunGard, WealthStation CompAct can help advisers redefine and strengthen client relationships through several capabilities:

• Simplified prioritization of goals by focusing the client’s resources on the most important topics first;
• Streamlined data input process through tools that automatically set assumptions, provide recommendations, and illustrate various scenarios for comparison;
• Generation of a client-focused analysis including easy-to-understand illustrations;
• Incorporating SunGard’s MyRetirement to help advisers determine a client’s withdrawal rate during retirement; and
• Integration with WealthStation Financial Planning to provide efficiencies in creating a more in-depth plan at a later date if needed.

The increase in competition and drive to greater efficiency and productivity makes it more necessary for advisers to differentiate themselves with client-friendly financial plans and to help clients quickly understand how to achieve prioritized goals, said Jennifer Valdez, senior vice president and general manager of SunGard’s wealth and retirement administration business. “At the same time, financial advisers are looking to extend the financial planning experience to more clients, and do so efficiently, consistently and profitably,” Valdez said.

SunGard’s WealthStation CompAct addresses multiple planning concepts at a simple level of user interactivity, helping advisers prioritize multiple client goals and streamline the plan-creation process.”

More information about the tool is on SunGard’s site.