First Looks: The New Figlo

My Take
The new Figlo is a work in progress. It may be unfair to pass judgment on Figlo Advisor at this point, but the platform looks promising, so it is appropriate to monitor it now.

I like the fact that Advisor is totally customizable. If a firm does not have the expertise to do it, it can contract with Advicent to do the customization through a consulting arrangement. This is, perhaps, the greatest differentiator for Figlo: the ability to use Narrator to create what amounts to your own totally custom version of the software, one that will be unique to your firm.

The Inventory Wizard is very well designed and intuitive. It allows even novice users to populate the necessary plan data quickly and efficiently.
The goal gauge operates somewhat differently than other Monte Carlo simulation modules do, and it should enable advisors to illustrate the trade-off between risk and return.

Figlo Advisor currently requires Silverlight to run, though Advicent says that it can also run properly on Internet Explorer and Firefox. Next year, Figlo advisor will move to an HTML 5 platform. At that point, it should work with any major browser. Figlo Client and Figlo Leads are already built on HTML 5.

As of this writing, the education cost database is not yet operational, nor are the new net worth/cash flow reports, variable annuity functionality or the Roth 401(k) functionality or long-term-care insurance. They should all be operational by the time you read this. In December, the new Figlo client app and the new Figlo Advisor Dashboard will be released.

I’m not totally comfortable with the way goals are assigned or how the spending occurs. If you don’t assign an account to a goal, it doesn’t get spent. This can lead to errors if advisors add an account and fail to assign it. I’d probably default to assigning accounts to all goals, with the option to deselect one or more goals. And when I do so, I’d like the program to fund my most important goal first. For most clients, that would be retirement, but it might be something else. Also, when accounts are assigned to all goals now, the goals are funded chronologically. That is not the outcome most clients will want. You can, of course, assign an account to a single goal, but doing so does not allow you to optimize your goal-funding automatically. The application should do this for you.

When you log on to the application, you can view a client list and a prospect list. Currently, the only way you can get a prospect on the list is to also subscribe to the Figlo Leads module. You can’t enter prospects manually, integrate with other prospect generation tools or import them from another program. Firms that already have a lead generation program might not appreciate this limitation.

Overall, the Figlo suite of products looks promising. Larger organizations that adopt Narrator, Figlo Advisor, the Client Portal and the Leads module will have a great deal of latitude in crafting what looks to the client like their own financial planning platform. Business analytics will further strengthen the offering. Combined with a modern digital investment platform, it will offer an online experience that today’s consumer-facing digital firms cannot match. When you add in the expertise that the advisors bring to the experience, you just might have a winning combination.

It is early in the game, though, and it remains to be seen whether Advicent can successfully execute all of its plans. Still, the Figlo platform is the most significant development from Advicent and its predecessor companies in quite some time.