Envestnet’s New RIA Planning Tool Is a ‘Good Start’: Bruckenstein

For instance, “I’d love to see some analytics around the MoneyGuide dial and the probability of plan success,” he said. “Knowing what plans have not been reviewed recently is helpful, but it would be much more helpful to know what plans have had a significant change in the probability of success so that immediate action can be taken.”

In addition, “some measure of client engagement would be helpful,” he went on to say, noting: “I want to know who has engaged with the Play Zone, the client portal, etc. If I can identify patterns across client subsets, or across clients of various advisors, that would be valuable information.”

Bruckenstein was “told that some benchmarking is already in the works.”

“I expect to see benchmarks for how often advisors update plans vs. other advisors as well as how many goals an advisor is setting vs. some benchmark,” the T3 founder explained.

Other Items

The initial college goal view offers “some value, but it is not nearly what it could be,” he said, explaining: “ If I could see whether the plan calls for a public or private college, and if I could see whether there are 529 or Education IRA’s associated with the households, I’d have a much better picture.”

Similarly, in the healthcare goal view, “if I knew whether the plan anticipated traditional Medicare or Medicare Advantage, and if I knew the anticipated state of residence in retirement, I’d have a better idea if the health goal had sufficient funding,” he pointed out.

Bruckenstein also wants to “see some data points tracked over time,” he said, explaining that “it is great to know the average client age, but it is much more valuable to track the trend over time.”

What also offers “potential is a deeper tie in with MoneyGuide Blocks,” he said. Also, “more broadly speaking, tighter integration with both the MoneyGuide and Envestnet platforms is highly desirable,” he noted.

“Beyond the data enhancements, the next frontier for this platform should be predictive analytics,” he explained. “There are questions predictive analytics can address. There is an opportunity to do some predictive analytics around future spending and a host of other factors, too. Predictive analytics can also be used to prioritize tasks.”

It takes time for tools like this to be introduced, because it’s just “not that easy to do, and it can be costly,” Bruckenstein said. “Also, as you can see, when you start going down this path, advisors, like me, are going to ask for more.”

“My sense is that the launch of RIA Planning Analytics is just the very beginning of a journey that put powerful analytical tools in the hand of advisors. I look forward to seeing where this journey takes us,” the T3 producer explained.