Financial Advisor's Integrated Planning Platform

Case Study

Financial Advisors Integrated Planning (IP) Platform

Integrated Financial Planning is crucial for every individual in the fast-developing world of today. According to Gallup and their findings, 55% of American adults with annual household incomes of $75,000 or more have a will.

At a Glance

The most important aspect of financial planning is Estate Planning to anticipate and make preparations for the management and distribution of a person’s assets while they are alive.

Taking into account these essential factors, Azilen collaborated with its client to develop an innovative solution to meet the expanding needs of Financial Advisors in the fintech software development industry.

Key Highlights

Compliance Management

Editing Engine

Estate Plan Creation and Mgmt.

Document Management

Broker-Dealer Management

Micro-service Architecture

Challenges

Falsification and forgery of wills
Secure Plan Creation with Estate Management
Physical document loss and misplacement
Dynamic workflows, driven by Legal Compliances

About Client

The client is a leading financial services provider assisting Financial Advisors with new and relevant tools. These tools holistically improve its end client’s asset management & estate planning experience.

FinTech

Industry

Integrated Planning

Domain

South Africa

Location

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How we helped?

The client collaborated with us owing to our rich experience in developing and deploying similar integrated solutions in the Financial Planning domain. Azilen, undertook this assignment to implement a coherent platform supporting multiple stakeholders and users on it.

1350+

Financial Advisors Onboarded

1800+

Financial Institutions Integrated

3000+

Satisfied Clients

The Solution

The customer sought to create a product with the latest business and technological developments in the estate planning industry. In order to coordinate estate planning strategies for their final clients, we merged the efficiency of cutting-edge technology with financial advisors and their firms in this solution. We developed a white-labelled SaaS platform that integrates and connects the estate planners, financial advisors, and their end clients under a single roof.

The overall solution for Integrated Planning (IP) comprises of a comprehensive platform that collaborates with financial stakeholders in executing an efficient estate planning process for the end clients and their families. The below infographic summarizes the platform and its stakeholders:

Estate planners are realizing that implementing the latest technology into their financial services is a faster, more efficient, and less costly way of working to produce legal documents for their end clients. It has multi-fold advantages such as:

It creates a more streamlined and holistic journey for the estate planning firms
It helps in protecting the assets and taking care of liabilities using latest technologies
It simplifies taxes & future for the end client’s family in an automated manner

The following are the major components & stakeholders of the IP Platform:

1. IP Executive

Will be the super admin of the entire platform responsible for the configuration & creation of the estate plans & setting up the compliance for the respective broker-dealers.

2. IP Admin

Is essentially an Estate Plan reviewer for the various plan submitted by financial advisors. Also, the IP admin will handle the support tickets created by advisors /clients.

3. System Admin

Is the Financial Firms rep. who will onboard the financial advisors, manage the firms’ white labeling aspect, & purchase & assign subscriptions/bundles to their advisors.

4. Financial Advisor

Is the face of the firm for the end clients. S/he will be able to help the clients to initiate their estate planning journey starting by form filling to getting the legal documentation done from the IP Admin.

6. End Client

Is the receiver of the estate plan service via the respective firm and advisor.

Functional Modules supported in the Integrated Planning Platform:

The following modules leverage technology with advisor support to enhance the capabilities of trusted financial advisors in solving end clients’ estate planning requirements.

1. Making processes secure and accessible through Authentication, Authorization, and Administration services:

Compliance Management
Firms White labeling
Onboarding Advisors
IP Admin Allocation
Broker-Dealer
Plan Management
User management
Client Management
News and Events Management

2. Solving the content needs of Content Management & Support:

News and Event Management
Training & Resources Management
Help and Support
Ticketing (Zendesk Integration)

3. Creating and delivering different types of reports using Reporting Services:

Generate different dashboard reports
Various Platform usage reports for different user roles
Payment Reports
Client Estate plan reports
Client listing Reports

4. Making the payment process rapid and secure using Subscription and Billing services:

Payment and Billing
Payment Invoices
Discount Codes Management
Bundles Management
Subscriptions Management
Subscription History

5. Easing the Estate Plan Management workflows using:

Estate Plan Management
Estate Plan Questionnaire
Plan Configuration
Workflow Management
Property Deed Mgmt.
Deed Editing & Review
Document Template creation and edits

6. Automating the Backend Processes & Operations through:

Audit Services
Notification Services
Application Performance Monitoring
API Gateways

BaaS – Blockchain as a Solution:

Traditionally, advisors drive clients’ concerns and advise them on estate planning with plan documentation. This Estate Plan document is usually a physical doc that is notarized with the state to make it legal. Following are the challenges associated with the same:

Falsification and forgery of plans along with the ease of destroying paper.
Loss/Misplacement of physical documents – leaving the survivors in uncertainty.
As the plans are often prepared much earlier before a person passes away, they may not address all the assets owned by the person at the time of their demise.
Security is of paramount importance as unauthorized access is a major downturn for physical legal docs.

To solve the above-mentioned challenges, we proposed a blockchain-based signage module within the platform. In this, estate plans will be signed digitally and the final copy will be stored on Blockchain. The link for this final copy will be shared with clients for their access to the document.

This will not only help clients to not manage the physical documents but also increase trust as the blockchain-based ledger is immutable, so nobody can tamper with it. Some of the advantages of BaaS are as follows:

Security of the electronic signed plan and resistance to unknown modifications.
Changes in the plans are easily flagged by the system to the testifier & beneficiaries.
Document verification is easier through “Proof of existence” which acts as a public notary.
Private in nature as every beneficiary & the testifier are represented by a hash address.
Post the testifier’s demise, the plan would be executed automatically, thus saving time.