8 ways you can use FE Analytics to deliver value for your clients in retirement

Retirement planning, and specifically drawdown, is one of the most difficult services an adviser can offer. The goal is to achieve the retirement outcome that clients are comfortable with and not just one that they can survive on. It’s important that clients have saved enough in order to draw a sustainable income that matches their expectations. A well-thought-out plan reduces the probability of running out of money and improves retirees’ financial confidence, giving them peace of mind.

FE Analytics is a powerful tool that can support your existing centralised retirement proposition by enabling you to seamlessly analyse your clients' existing investments, check the suitability of their investments, and customise their analysis and reporting for retirement. FE Analytics does the heavy lifting by providing easy to use investment research and analysis tools, meaning you can spend more time with your clients and focus on growing your business.

The Client Manager feature ensures you have a fully compliant process by saving an audit trail of your research and historical changes to your clients’ portfolio. You can access this via the side bar; simply click on Client Tool > Client Manager to get started. Here you can easily set up a compliance trail of your client's details as you build in their custom analysis and research, and simply monitor portfolio returns as you receive alerts on any significant changes to their underlying investments.

With the Model Portfolio Service (MPS) Directory you can browse over 65 different portfolio providers, including our own FE Investments Decumulation Portfolios. If your client is already invested in a model portfolio, simply select a provider, request activation and their portfolio will be fed directly into your FE Analytics account.

From here you can start analysing their investments. Data comes directly from the providers and updates are provided in real time, so there’s no need to key in any information yourself. You can then use the full range of features, reports and charts to analyse the portfolio seamlessly. 

If you’re an existing FE Investments client, you can invest in our range of Decumulation Portfolios, which aim to provide your clients with a well- thought-out plan and sustainable income drawdown during retirement. The portfolios are constructed to consider the income needs of your clients, while also making sure that their capital does not run out prematurely. 

Our Decumulation Portfolios work with our Decumulation Illustrator tool, which helps bring your clients' circumstances to life by visually demonstrating the different options available in decumulation, helping you ensure they have a diversified and sustainable retirement portfolio.  

Once you’ve input your clients pot size, level of income required and charges, the tool determines the optimal balance between key retirement risks and determines the recommended split between the Decumulation Portfolios. You can then generate a report illustrating the 'income viability' score, which shows the likelihood of clients not having to cut their income during retirement. The income plan can be altered to be compatible with the investor’s risk appetite.

Alternatively, if your client isn’t invested in an existing MPS, or perhaps they’re invested in a bespoke solution built by yourself or a previous adviser, you can build a portfolio from scratch using our Portfolio Builder.  

Simply go to the Portfolio tab and click on ‘New Portfolio Builder.’ Use the drop down to find investments by matching or using the Bulk Code Importer, which allows you to add in as many codes as you like and pull them straight into the Portfolio Builder. You can also add currencies, and funds as holdings. Once you’ve built the portfolio, you can save it directly to your account using the Client Manager.

Once you’ve established your client's appetite for risk you can now use the Custom Tables feature. This is the most adaptable large-scale research tool in FE Analytics, and where you can start looking at which portfolio is going to be the most suitable retirement solution for your client and build a custom table to do some portfolio analysis. Here you can analyse an unlimited number of instruments, with up to 70 data fields in one place, including performance, volatility, and risk score.

You can also review your portfolio options here and narrow down your potential choices. Once your table is ready, you can view the top quartile, with second then appearing in purple, third in yellow, and then bottom quartile will be red. You can save this directly to your report layout dropdown and Client Manager to come back to later.

The Portfolio Comparison tool, which is located under reports, allows you to quickly and easily model your client's current investments and see how they stack up against other portfolios. There is hardly any pre-setup required as your portfolio should be pre-populated in there. You can find another portfolio by searching the name - simply select the portfolios, watch it load and it will produce a client-friendly report which you can use when discussing your recommendations with your client.

Once you have the portfolio holdings side-by-side, you’ll be able to see the portfolio costs, performance and risk level over a defined time horizon, side-by-side against the client's current solution. This allows for easy analysis and means that you can easily review their current portfolio against a new and specific retirement solution.

Our Custom Report Builder enables you to choose from 150 data fields, meaning you can tailor reports to your exact requirements and start producing client friendly reports in minutes. You can find this under the reports tab and it’s as simple as clicking on a Medium Scan.

All charts, tables and reports can be exported to PDF or MS Excel and include the ability to add your own custom settings. It’s personal and more adaptable to suit your client’s needs, and you can white label it with your logo, branding and even customise reports with meeting notes, dates, and other key facts that you can present to your client.

Demonstrate the value of your advice

Perhaps your client needs some convincing that they should be investing for retirement? Using the Relative Charting feature you can show the power of investing over saving by demonstrating how cash would have performed against inflation historically, and how certain investments or portfolios would have performed against inflation over the same timeframe. This feature helps you demonstrate the value of your advice and you can back it up with a client friendly graphic that is simple to understand.

Using our cashflow planning tool, CashCalc, you can take this a step further and calculate exactly how much your client needs to retire. Simply bring your client's financial situation to life and create powerful and engaging lifetime cashflow plans. Click here to learn more about CashCalc.

We hope we’ve given you some insight into how you can use FE Analytics to help deliver the best outcomes for your clients in retirement.

Do you want to find out more about how FE Analytics could help you make better and more informed decisions in your clients' retirement?

Get in touch to find out more or to arrange a demo