PIEtech Inc., the creators of MoneyGuidePro, on Thursday announced the release of myMoneyGuide, the industry's first technology solution capable of delivering scalable, quality financial planning guidance. 

The product combines a new, modern technology that helps advisors, firms and employers offer financial plans on an unprecedented scale. The new product guides investors through the online creation of their own financial plan in a safe, objective and unbiased environment via a private invitation only available from an advisor, firm, employer or association, according to PIEtech. Upon completion of the myMoneyGuide Lab, investors can request professional advice from the advisor or firm who invited them. All labs are delivered by certified financial planners  employed by myMoneyGuide.

"We've never seem as much excitement around a product release as we have with myMoneyGuide,” said Bob Curtis, founder and CEO of PIEtech.

Here's how it works for independent advisors: Individuals are invited to participate in a session by an advisor, either in person or digitally. In either case, they receive a link that takes them to a myMoneyGuide landing page customized with the advisors branding, picture and contact info. On the page, the invitee can select the type of session they want (small business owner, those more than 10 years from retirement, etc.), and then select a time to take the lab from the list of available sessions.

They then participate in a 90-minute, guided online interactive session powered by patent-pending technology and live support. During the session, individuals build a basic financial plan in real time and ask questions of software experts who can help them input their information. After receiving an invitation, invitees may select from among hundreds of labs available at times convenient to them, including nights and weekends.

Examples of offerings include labs for those approaching retirement, those already retired, small business owners and even sessions for those with a "really good sense of humor." Setting itself apart from existing solutions, myMoneyGuide guides attendees through the process, educates them on relevant topics, with information specific to their situation. Attendees are given a plan that they are encouraged to have reviewed, optimized and implemented by a professional financial advisor. The product offers 60 labs per week with live support, 14 hours per day. By early next year, the plan is to provide over 300 labs per day on a 24/7 basis.

Once attendees have completed the lab, the system identifies areas they should discuss with an advisor, such as their specific concerns, expectations, goals, health-care costs, retirement income, Social Security strategy selection, risk tolerance, asset allocation, retirement age optimization and insurance and estate planning issues. The individual is then invited to share their information and the plan that they have created with their advisor. (In the case of a financial firm implementation, the firm would direct the individual to one of their advisors.)

According to PIEtech President Kevin Knull, the invitation to share the information with an advisor is key because until the plan is reviewed and optimized by an advisor, the user cannot reap the maximum benefit from the planning process.

Assuming the individual agrees to share the information with the advisor—and beta testing indicates an overwhelming majority of myMoneyGuide participants do—the data can then be fed directly into MoneyGuidePro professional financial planning software for further analysis by the advisor. Furthermore, in light of the recent integration deal between MoneyGuidePro and eMoney, advisors can leverage the power of eMoney Select to provide the client with a client portal and other features provided by the combination of MoneyGuidePro and eMoney Select.

Advisors pay $75 per lab attendee; not per invitee. The payment system is similar to Google Ad words. Advisors can budget a certain amount to prospecting through myMoneyGuide, and prospects can register for labs until the budget is exhausted. For example, if an advisor budgeted $1,500 in a month to myMoneyGuide, they could invite 20 people to register for labs. “The beauty of the system is that advisors can immediately gauge their ROI”, said Curtis. “They control exactly what they want to spend, and they know how many attendees shared information and engaged with an advisor”.

The product has the potential to be as impactful on the financial planning space as robo-advisors have been in the investment management space for a number of reasons:

First, like robo-advisors, myMoneyGuide puts the consumer in the driver’s seat. While they must be invited by a financial intermediary or an employer to participate, once they are invited, they can  choose the type of session that they want to attend and they can choose the time. Once they get their initial results from the lab, the odds are that issues will be identified that require the help of a trained professional in order to optimally address those problems. Furthermore, lab attendees do not get indefinite access to the lab results unless they engage with an advisor. If they choose not to attend a lab, their access ends after 14 days.

Second, the primary reason that individuals give for not engaging with an advisor, according to Kevin Knull, is that the initial data-gathering meeting is uncomfortable for new clients. Allowing clients to enter their own data and learn a bit about the planning process before engaging with the advisor goes a long way towards alleviating that discomfort.

Third, one of the primary challenges facing advisors who provide financial planning advice is scale. Research by Technology Tools for Today (T3) indicates that up to 40% or more of the cost of producing a financial plan can be attributed to data gathering and data entry when those processes must be handled manually. In the case of myMoneyGuide, much, and in some cases all, of the data needed to complete a plan will have already been provided by the client.

Fourth, many potential clients still believe that financial planning is only something available to the rich. By making it affordable for advisors to offer the labs on a large scale, and from there to produce a plan for less wealthy individuals and couples at a low cost (and they perhaps manage their assets on a very low cost, automated digital advice platform), myMoneyGuide makes acquiring a financial plan affordable to virtually everyone.

Also, myMoneyGuide can be used as a stand-alone marketing tool to attract new prospects digitally. Any advisory firm that is a MoneyGuidePro client can allow as many prospects as they’d like to visit their website, participate in a lab and engage with the advisory firm.

If your firm is one of the many firms that is planning to offer a digital investment platform to clients and prospects in order to compete with direct-to-consumer robo-advisors, pairing myMoneyGuide with such a platform would appear to be an astute move. If nothing else, it would educate prospects that robo-advisors are limited to offering investment advice as opposed to a broader range of financial planning services that your firm offers. It is a way to differentiate and to add value.

For those of you who work with retirement plan participants, myMoneyGuide could offer a tremendous opportunity to expand the scope of your business.

myMoneyGuide represents the first credible technology for delivering financial planning advice to a very broad audience. If successful, it will educate the public to the need for financial planning advice and make it available to all. Advisors will benefit because it can significantly expand the demand for financial planning advice and empower advisors to recruit and serve new clients at a rate unimaginable a few short years ago.