In comparison to other tools, that’s where Dynamic Planner’s Cash flow planning is brilliant – the ability to model for a client stochastically, showing the level of risk within the portfolio and plan. What a client can expect to happen, but also what a client needs to be aware can happen.
Other cash flow modelling tools use fixed assumptions and we know fixed doesn’t exist, in that sense. Everything moves. Everything changes. There’s no certainty with anything you do as an adviser. For the modern world we now live in – for analysis, regulation and for remote meetings – the way Dynamic Planner is designed and built I think is brilliant.
By linking the risk profile of a portfolio to a cash flow plan, you have a story to tell the client, in terms of what assumptions you’ve assessed and are happy with and are therefore using here.
The way you can very quickly forecast different levels of expenditure for the client is useful and really helps with your conversations, because, often, a lot of clients haven’t nailed what their ambitions really are for retirement. If you were using another cash flow modelling tool, you would have to start again and physically produce another model and another model and so on, which is all extra effort.
In Dynamic Planner and in a final cash flow report for a client, you can have three different levels of expenditure for a client [basic, mid and high] alongside the three, ‘What if?’ scenarios for higher or lower portfolio growth rates all in one. Using another tool, that would probably take twice as long, physically modelling all those other ‘What if?’ scenarios. That’s a valuable benefit of Dynamic Planner.
The big advantage of Dynamic Planner’s cash flow is the risk assessments being completed in the background. Other tools, I don’t think, have that in their back pocket – they’ve all, in that sense, started life as pure cash flow planning tools. While they may be ahead, in terms of being able to produce a myriad of more calculations, they haven’t got that link – that real life, client link – to risk. So, yes, they may be able to plug in more numbers, but they don’t arguably relate to anything.
In this world we now live in, Dynamic Planner’s new cash flow works – in terms of showing the regulator what you’re doing and delivering, and that you’re assessing risk for a client correctly, which seems to be the FCA’s biggest bugbear today: risk and appetite for loss. It’s everywhere you go.
Would you recommend Dynamic Planner Cash flow to a fellow advice firm?
I like it and absolutely would recommend it to another firm, alongside of course Dynamic Planner’s risk assessment, which I’ve used for years. I like the layout of reports Dynamic Planner produces and the fact that you can produce a report, from start to finish, including the risk questionnaire, valuation and cash flow plan all in one. That’s a client meeting right there. In the real world, that’s amazing.
