How advisors pick financial planning software

After Advisor.ca looked at how four financial planning and analysis software products fare on features for mid-career and retirement planning, we asked advisors how they made their software choices. Experienced users said cost, technical support, live updates and layout clarity were key factors.

This third part of our series considers the same four leading software providers in the Canadian market: Conquest Planning, Naviplan, RazorPlan and Snap Projections. Advisors encourage colleagues to also look at plans made by other advisors using different software.

Cost

While advisors with a firm usually have access to enterprise plans, software pricing is a major factor for independent advisors. One advisor said they switched software providers when they found a competitor offering similar features for a lower cost.

Financial planning software firms generally offer different tiers with more expensive versions having additional features. There’s also a discount on annual subscriptions over monthly plans and all four companies offer enterprise plans with custom pricing.

RazorPlan comes in standard and advanced versions. The standard version costs $745 per year, while the advanced version, with life insurance, private corporation and estate planning features, costs $1,070. Decumulation modules are also available at an additional cost.

Snap’s standard plan, called Advisor Professional, costs $828 a year. Its advanced version with private corporation planning tools, called Advisor Business, costs $1,188 a year. A stress testing module is additionally available for $96 a year.

Conquest offers three tiers, but only to enterprise clients. Tier one is for prospecting and lead generation only where the self-directed client creates a plan without advisor involvement. Tier two is sufficient for most planning situations with a family trust tool and tier three includes private corporation planning.

Naviplan costs $2,500 per licence per year, which includes planning with holding companies. A client portal is available for an additional $1,000 a year and planning with operating companies for $500 a year. The discount is available for multi-user and multi-year agreements.

Live updates

Advisors generally enjoyed software that updated instantly as they made changes.  They said live updates made it more efficient to make changes and let them quickly tweak a plan during a client meeting.

Conquest provides live updates. The company said this made it easier for advisors to spot and correct errors as they don’t need to wait for a new recalculation to identify and fix any mistakes.

But RazorPlan, Snap and Naviplan have opted for systems that only recalculate plans when a user clicks a button. RazorPlan said solving for a change takes three to five seconds, so instant updates would trigger a three to five second refresh each time a value is changed. Meanwhile, Snap said its software asks advisors whether they are sure about their changes before recalculating, which reduces the chances of user error. And Naviplan is working on providing live feedback in a future software update.

Learning curve

Many advisors have switched between different planning software as they move firms, go independent or legacy software gets phased out. They’ve noted that some products have a steeper learning curve than others and offer varying degrees of technical support.

While Conquest supports in-depth financial planning, advisors who have used its software agree that it’s difficult to use at first. One advisor said they warn new users that they will get frustrated with its complexity but be surprised by Conquest’s capability once they learn how to use it.

Conquest offers detailed help documentation that walks users through features and hosts recurring Conquest University sessions to offer structured instruction. The software’s strategic advice manager can also look for opportunities such as suggesting a Registered Disability Savings Plan for a disabled client.

Snap offers one-to-one onboarding sessions to new users and ongoing drop-in support sessions and webinars. Snap said 80% of service calls are answered immediately and the support team returns 85% of voicemails and emails within two hours. Additionally, advisors can hide all advanced features if they only need to make a simple plan.

Naviplan offers a three- to five-hour online training course for new users to learn at their own pace. After that, they can access an online learning centre with videos, articles and a detailed user guide on how to use all software features. Each planning section also has a button to show information on how to use that page. Additionally, a call centre is available in English and French.

Similarly, RazorPlan has email support with access to Certified Financial Planners with over 10 years of experience. The user guide has a keyword search function, which is being converted into a natural language processing engine so advisors can ask it questions in a future update.

Layout customization

Advisors present information differently to clients depending on their needs. While some clients just want a one-page executive summary with their goals and next steps, other clients appreciate more detail.

Advisors using Conquest can choose the level of detail they want to show to a client on the summary section. For example, the section can provide a detailed review of asset classification and owner of each account, or just show the market value of the assets. Advisors can select and resize what charts to show and can access custom branding features.

Snap’s summary section is customizable with tiles showing information such as goals, net worth and estate size that can be added, removed and rearranged. Additional pages are automatically added as more tiles are put in, so it’s not limited to one page.

RazorPlan’s financial summary information was designed to fit on one page. The software shows key values like assets, liabilities and investment asset types. Advisors can choose which layout they want to use, but the summary page isn’t customizable yet.

Another area of layout customization advisors say they want is the ability to move the disclaimer page to the back of the plan.

Conquest and Snap allow advisors to move the disclaimer pages to the back of the plan. Naviplan lets users insert a custom disclaimer that can be shown as a footnote or completely removed. RazorPlan’s disclaimers are always placed in the end of the document by default. Most software companies offer additional disclaimer customization options with enterprise plans.

Accessibility

Advisors don’t just want to customize the layout; they also want to customize visual style to suit different client needs. For example, older clients or those with visual impairments may find it easier to read charts with brighter colours or a larger font size.

Snap doesn’t offer colour customization yet, but advisors can change the size of charts.

Advisors using RazorPlan can select from preset report layouts with customization coming in a later version.

Naviplan reports can’t be customized in the software, but they can be exported as Microsoft Word documents where fonts and colors can be changed. Advisors can also copy and paste multiple reports into the same Word document and move charts around.

Meanwhile, Conquest leads with a feature to use high-contrast colours that complies with version 2.1 of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines for people with visual disabilities.

Methodology

This article is part of a series. Advisor.ca asked advisors to create financial plans for two sample clients with four of the most used financial planning and analysis software in 2024. One client family is a mid-career couple with a corporation hoping to save for a house and the other client family is a retired couple with a defined-benefits pension plan. The advisors shared what software features they looked for and the four tech firms explained their design choices.

This series was created with the input of the following advisors: Aravind Sithamparapillai, associate at Ironwood Wealth Management Group in Hamilton; Ayana Forward, independent fee-only retirement planner at Retirement in View in Ottawa; Ben Wilson, financial planner and advisor services lead at PWL Capital in Ottawa; Mark McGrath, financial planner and associate portfolio manager at PWL Capital in Squamish, B.C.; and Scott Sather, president and financial planner at Awaken Wealth Management in Regina.