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?"
