Kelley Rating (one asterisk = lowest, five asterisks = highest):
- Ease of navigation, design of interface and learning curve ****
- Instructional documentation and help system ***
- Carries out the goal of the product as advertised *****
- Overall usefulness *****
SunGard Mobile Meeting is designed for the financial services and trusts and estates communities. It provides flexible financial data for mobile platforms, particularly the iPad, and focuses on using mobile technology to facilitate the advisor meeting with the client. It’s directed toward simplifying complex client information and reporting it in an understandable and interactive manner, as an alternative to traditional static print delivery of client reports. Advisors may interactively discuss the client’s financial position, asset modeling and future goals through clear presentation of information, investment selection and design of alternate scenarios for investment planning and action. With this technology, such client meetings may be held anytime and anywhere with full access to the client’s portfolio, plans and information.
Mobile Meeting uses existing WealthStation data, and planning reports and can import data from other sources. It, thus, gives advisors ready mobile access to the client’s financial data. The data isn’t stored on the mobile device, but is maintained on Sungard’s servers for optimum security, far more secure than maintaining client data on the tablet computer in PDF or other electronic file format.
Mobile Meeting supplements and integrates with the SunGard WealthStation platform, reviewed in Kelley, SunGard Wealth Station (1/27/2009), and with their Investor’sView Premium Solution
This product is optimized for the Safari Mobile browser. Mobile Meeting is also compatible with desktop browsers like Chrome and Safari, but when running on a desktop, instead of a tablet, vertical scroll bars will sometimes appear.
What’s It All About?
Mobile Meeting enables you to access various views of portfolio graphics and tabular reports. From the summaries presented, you may drill into the client portfolio for information on individual properties. From the Investment Purpose screen, you may examine why a particular asset is in the portfolio and map assets to investment purposes. You may engage the client in interactive planning for general goals and accumulation, and you may plot spending goals, charitable transfers, gifts, sales to family members and other planning.
The Planning for the Future facility promotes client collaboration by offering interactive tools to facilitate planning for future changes, financial modeling and asset allocation, including quick what-if analyses.
How it Works
Mobile Meeting opens with a graphic bookshelf with representations of the meetings you have previously set up and a “Create new Meeting” graphic to initiate a new meeting. A separate bookshelf representation gives you access to any PDF report files you are storing.
Clicking on any meeting graphic on the bookshelf brings up a menu from which you may open the meeting, publish a draft report, publish a final report, delete the meeting, save the meeting offline or refresh the data in the meeting with current data from the data source.
This product is divided into five principal sections designed to follow the typical workflow of a client meeting:
Relationship Review–This area organizes details of client relationships, including contact, family and demographic data. It’s divided into Personal, Family and Financial. The Personal page is initially displayed. You may access the other sections by clicking a small arrow graphic at the bottom left of the page. The Financial section displays the client’s banking, brokerage relationships, mortgages, accountants, lawyers and other advisors along with their contact information.
Current Portfolios Review–This area is divided into Portfolio Objectives, Performance, Investment Purpose and Actual vs. Target Allocations. You can view total performance or break it down by account areas based on the data entered. Initially, in each category, a list of portfolios is depicted graphically by pie charts for each account with divisions for equity, fixed income, cash and others. Tapping on a pie chart brings up a tabulation of the divisions from which you may drill down for further detail on costs, market value and yield of individual investments. Investment Purpose displays the portfolios divided into inflation protection, capital appreciation, wealth preservation and hedge with a tabular view displaying the allocation of investments to each purpose. Actual vs. Target Allocations shows the allocations among asset classes in graphic display and tabular form with actual investments, target allocations and variance.
Planning for the Future–The divisions in this section are Interactive Planning, Interactive Comparison, Retirement Planning, Tax View (tax characterization and gain/loss amount) and Held-Away Assets. Interactive Planning displays graphs of inflows, outflows, after taxes net and after living expenses net for future years in tabular form. In Interactive Comparison, you can view performance by economic sector allocation, style class allocation (large cap, mid cap, etc.) or portfolio holdings. You can also display the assumptions on which the current scenario is based. In the Retirement Planning area, you can select the desired retirement year, enter goals, desired income during retirement and years of retirement. You can then view interactive graphs for various aspects of retirement investment and you can affect the graphics by changing the variables of retirement planning.
A tool bar at the top of the screen provides icons for access to the home screen, meeting and advisor notes, reference documents, other accounts and bookmarks. A left side navigation bar is available by touching a button on the lower left of the screen. There is a breadcrumb trail at the top of the screen, so that you can see where you are and return to previous screens.
Tapping a pencil icon allows you to take meeting notes in any section as you work with the client.
At end of the client meeting, the advisor may create a PDF document including the notes taken during the conference. Comparisons and multiple scenarios may be bookmarked and maintained to provide record of the client meeting. Reference documents provides a record of information and issues discussed in previous meetings, and you may access this area from any screen by tapping on an icon on the top tool bar. Supporting documents and other reference materials may be stored on the server and made available for access during the client meeting. Client documents can be stored here for convenient reference
What About Help and Support?
Online help will be available from the toolbar in all areas of the application in the production environment. The publisher will also be offering online video training materials covering the effective use of Mobile Meeting.
Where Do You Get This Facility?
Mobile Meeting is available from:
SunGard Financial Systems, Sales
Phone: 800-825-2518
Website: http://www.sungard.com/mobilemeeting
Pricing will be furnished by the SunGard sales team.
Bottom Line
Mobile Meeting provides a remarkably flexible and informative means of reporting asset management and planning alternatives to the client and promoting client collaboration in planning, goal setting and portfolio design.
Trusts & Estates magazine is pleased to present the monthly Technology Reviewby Donald H. Kelley—a respected connoisseur of the software and Internet resources wealth management advisors use to further their practices.
Kelley is a lawyer living in Highlands Ranch, Colo., and is of counsel to the law firm of Kelley, Scritsmier & Byrne, P.C. of North Platte, Neb. He is the co-author of the Intuitive Estate PlannerSoftware, (Thomson – West 2004). He has served on the governing boards of the American Bar Association Real Property Probate and Trust Section and the American College of Tax Counsel. He is a past regent and past chair of the Committee on Technology in the Practice of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel.
Trusts & Estates has asked Kelley to provide his unvarnished opinions on the tech resources available in the practice today. His columns are edited for readability only. Send feedback and suggestions for articles directly to him at [email protected].
