IPC Case Study

 Investment Planning Counsel - Case Study
This document is a high level Case Study outlining how PlanPlus Planit has been successfully implemented into a large corporate environment with multiple levels of integration. IPC is also an example of a PlanPlus hosted client and illustrates how PlanPlus supports this type of customer. Investment Planning Counsel Investment Planning Counsel is a specific channel within the Power Corporation family that includes Great West Life, Investors Group and financial services firms worldwide. This channel is designed for a higher end advisor that is more independent and has a distinct “planning and advice focus”. Although advisors are independent, IPC also owns a portfolio management firm called Counsel Wealth Management that provides a structured investment process using selected external managers and provides the client with specialized reporting, rebalancing services and so on. The desire is to have IPC reps utilize the professional portfolio management service and spend less time themselves “picking funds”, and more time focusing on the client relationship and proper financial planning advice. IPC piloted the system “stand alone” for a period of time to validate the basic Investment Policy Statement and Financial Planning capabilities. Then in 2007/2008 worked with PlanPlus to integrate the solution into one of the most comprehensive advisor desktops in the industry today. The “Dream Planner” system as it was branded was not simply a “technical” integration but also a business integration to tie into many of the value added components that was being delivered by the firm in general and the Counsel subsidiary. System Overview IPC Case Study
January 2010
In 2008 the overall solution was selected as the Best Use of Technology in Canada at the Canadian Investment Awards. The integrated training solution that was a composite of electronic content as well as coast-­‐to-­‐coast classroom training for IPC advisors delivered by IPC and PlanPlus was selected as the Best Advisor Education Program. A summary of the highlights of the solution include: • Winfund is the mutual fund back office used by advisors that are “MFDA Licenced” or mutual funds only. We implemented a single signon from Winfund to PlanPlus. Winfund passed a proprietary XML payload of client, account, holdings and product information that was transformed and imported to PlanPlus hosted by PlanPlus at the IBM datacenter in Montreal. • Croesus is the “stock and bond” back office which is used by “IIROC Licenced” advisors, which is a higher level of licencing in Canada. This system also executed a single signon to PlanPlus. PlanPlus then “called back” on a proprietary Croesus API to return client, account, holdings, product and currency information – transform it and import it to our solution. • Provides mutual fund and stock data and integrates to the investment holdings in PlanPlus Planit. Aside from pricing and allocation updates this allows dynamic creation of product factsheets. • Counsel Wealth Management exposed the PlanPlus modular calculators through their consumer facing portal for investor education. The initial deployment does not retain the data. The next phase is to have secure access through their customer intranet so customer data is integrated with the calculators. • IPC Connect is an internal aggregation layer and access point for advisors and consumers that IPC has been developing. This layer included a single signon to PlanPlus and will eventually be the conduit for insurance policy information. This component also feeds a customized version of Maximizer, a contact management solution for the advisors. • PlanPlus implemented over a dozen fillable Adobe forms from the Security Selection to allow advisors to print necessary paperwork without manual effort on the forms. Reinforcing “Good Advice” Behaviour Aside from the efficiency and time savings for reps from the numerous levels of integration, leading to higher levels of adoption and utilization, IPC and Counsel Wealth used PlanPlus Planit/Dream Planner to reinforce good planning behaviour with advisors: • A “Process View” encouraged advisors to follow recognized steps of engagement, data collection, analysis, presentation and reviews. • Over 20 special documents were added to the system including letters, forms and other materials – some in PDF and some word – many where PlanPlus merges in client information. • IPC defined multiple “Preferred Portfolios” that used recommended products as a default for a client (using the automated security selection mapping in PlanPlus), based on the clients risk profile, fee types for implementation and other factors. • In addition to core documents, Counsel Wealth uploads special manager overview documents that are dynamically merged into their two proprietary IPS documents. IPC is an excellent example of a company that has taken advantage of the integration and configurability of PlanPlus Planit to optimize the technical solution for their advisors. For more information contact PlanPlus. Website: www.planplus.com Email: [email protected] IPC Case Study
January 2010