What's Behind the Latest 'Record Year' for eMoney?

What You Need to Know

Savvy advisors see the future of their practice in the financial planning process.
Advisors who can build financial plans more efficiently and collaboratively will stand out.
The evolving landscape of financial advice demands a tech-forward approach.

More and more wealth advisors see the promise of their practice in the financial planning process, according to eMoney CEO Susan McKenna. The effort to craft a holistic (and fee-based) client relationship is steadily overtaking the traditional investment-oriented approach.

It’s been nearly two years since McKenna became the CEO, having moved into the role after leading the firm’s marketing and client acquisition efforts since 2018. The “big planning trend” has only accelerated in that time, she said, leading to a series of record growth years for eMoney’s planning platform.

“You sometimes hear people talking about a growth issue in the advisory industry, but we’re not seeing that,” McKenna recently told ThinkAdvisor. “We’re actually on track for another record year as more advisors embrace a planning-centric approach.”

More than 109,000 financial professionals across firms of all sizes use the eMoney platform to serve more than 6.3 million U.S. households, with a combined wealth of more than $2 trillion. McKenna said she’s proud to see the firm achieve these metrics, but the future looks even brighter.

Some Big Tech Updates

The company is “laser-focused,” McKenna said, on “continuing our own development and asking ourselves, what can we do to heighten the engagement between our advisor-clients and their own clients?”

She said that’s reflected in client portal updates and other announcements made at this year’s T3 Conference. These included what McKenna called a “significant facelift” making the portal a more interactive space that fosters personalized engagement between advisors and end users.

Also key are big updates to the eMoney platform’s “decision center,” which McKenna described as “the ideal planning hub” that consolidates multiple tools and reports into a singular workspace to boost advisor efficiency.

“It’s eMoney’s most interactive and collaborative planning solution, and it has become even more streamlined and engaging,” she said.

In the end, McKenna emphasized, eMoney aims to both foster and benefit from the paradigm shift to fee-based planning in a way that is a win-win for the financial technology firm and its independent and enterprise clients. This will require steady innovation and investment, focused on what clients say they want and need in a planning platform.

The Modern Financial Plan

One challenge in navigating this environment, according to McKenna, is identifying “just what goes into a modern financial plan, anyway?”

Planning Tech and Advisor Recruiting Trends

McKenna said she expects the relatively high pace of advisor industry recruiting news to continue as more advisors with both new and established practices make tough decisions about how they want to pilot their firms.

She would encourage all advisors who are contemplating a move to consider what the planning technology picture will look like afterward.

“We’ve seen advisors decide to leave and join another firm, only to realize they want to take their technology stack with them,” McKenna said. “They might find that they joined a firm for other reasons than the planning technology on offer, and they only later come to realize how important the tech was for their approach and success.”

The evolving landscape of financial advice, she argued, demands a tech-forward approach with features ranging from all-in-one account views, automated data gathering, robust account aggregation tools and a means of creating a holistic financial view across households.

Efficient communication pathways are also key, McKenna said, as are self-service exploration tools to allow clients to check on their finances independently and find answers within the portal.

“Clients now express a heightened preference for collaboration, personalized technology usage and adaptability in their advisors,” McKenna said. “These benefits align closely with what our clients report are the most important features of client portal technology.”