13 May 2011 - Distribution Technology, the UK’s leading provider of financial planning and sales software, is pleased to announce that it has extended its Dynamic Planner risk profiling services available to advisers and their customers.
Mark Hayes-Newington, Product and Propositions Director says “when the FSA consultation guidance paper was issued in January, we were quick to remind our clients that the risk profiling tools within Dynamic Planner already allowed advisers to follow the good practice recommended. At the same time, we recognised that there were opportunities to enhance the services we offer and to take risk profiling tools to a new level – which is what we have done today. Advisers can now benefit from plain English profile descriptions, unique safety features, improved MI and a Best Practice Guide that summarises our underlying methodology, as well as how to use Dynamic Planner”.
Firstly, the descriptions used for the 10 Dynamic Planner risk profile levels now include:
The risk profile descriptors use language appropriate to non-specialist investors and have received the clarity seal of approval from the Plain English Campaign, in the form of the popular Crystal Mark logo. This will help advisers to demonstrate that the language they have used is ‘fair, clear and not misleading’.
Secondly, the unique ‘safety features’ introduced use a combination of new screens, questions and free-form text to:
Thirdly, Dynamic Planner now offers enhanced MI for risk profile reporting. New dashboards are available to support advisory businesses with compliance management for risk profiling, at both an individual and a business level.
Finally, Distribution Technology has produced a Best Practice Guide, aimed at supporting users of the Dynamic Planner risk profiling tools. The Guide is based on the information received from back testing against thousands of risk profiles, work with Oxford Risk (a leading provider of psychometric profiling) and input from the Plain English Campaign to gain the Crystal Mark for our risk descriptions.
Ben Goss, CEO of Distribution Technology, adds “at Distribution Technology, we believe that understanding a customer’s attitude to and capacity for taking risk is a core part of the financial advice process. That’s why we are committed to ensuring that our risk profiling services are the best they can be, whether that’s our risk profiling tools, which sit at the heart of Dynamic Planner, or our fund risk profiling service, that allows advisers to build portfolios using funds aligned to the same risk profiles.
Providing high quality, robust risk profiling tools requires a deep understanding of technology, consumer psychometrics as well as investment and financial planning. It’s a rare combination and explains why so many financial services providers and advisers choose Distribution Technology for their solutions.”
Neil Stevens, Joint Managing Director of the SimplyBiz group, commented that “This announcement is further evidence of the Distribution Technology commitment to quality financial planning. This is the only technology provider of its kind, that I am aware of, to achieve the ‘plain English’ award for its customer-facing content and I am certain advisers will recognise and appreciate the absolute focus on client understanding. The range of improvements launched during 2011 has seen the already exceptional suite of software and tools provided by Distribution Technology move on to the next level.”
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