A Look Inside the Rise of Asset-Map in the T3 Technology Survey

It’s almost spring in the world of advisor technology, and that means it’s time for the annual T3 Technology Survey results.

Each year, Joel Bruckenstein and Bob Veres survey financial advisors across the country to learn what they think of the technology they use and what new options they want to add or are interested in adding to their tech stack.

This year’s survey included Asset-Map for the first time, and we couldn’t be happier with the results. Asset-Map was included in the “Financial Planning” category, and we posted the second-highest user rating of any planning software according to the advisors who responded. 

On top of that, we’re also one of the top 10 financial planning software providers advisors are looking to add to their technology stable in the year ahead.

The results got us thinking, though—what is it about Asset-Map that advisors like so much? We have a few ideas...

What Financial Advisors Like Best About Asset-Map

We’re always talking to our Asset-Map users so we can hear their feedback and improve our software. There are three primary reasons we hear all the time about how Asset-Map empowers advisors to communicate better with clients and plan more effectively.

Engaging Visual Plans

What can we say? People like pictures.

By now you’ve heard all the stats about how most people are visual learners, and quantitatively as well as qualitatively, we can see the truth of that every day. 

Financial advisors who use visuals to communicate their financial plans have an easier time engaging clients because the visual is more compelling than looking at a set of numbers and percentages. (For more on how visualization makes explaining a financial plan easier, click here to learn from an Asset-Map advisor directly.)

When both you and a client can see the entire layout of their financial household on one page, it makes it that much easier to talk about what matters to them financially while finding gaps in a plan. 

Fact-finding gets easier with visuals, too. By leveraging Stencils, financial advisors can create an Asset-Map Report quickly by using peer data to get a client’s map started, and then fill in the details with them in a collaborative process.

Simplified Goal Setting

Getting the landscape of a client’s financial life scoped out is just part one of effectively engaging someone with their financial plan.

The next step is to set goals and make sure a client has what they need to reach them. 

By using Target-Maps, advisors make tracking progress toward goals simple. They’re easy to set up, easy to change, and easy to review together with a client.

Too oftoften en, financial planning software is all about the advisor and commonly neglects the client engagement aspect. Target-Maps are built to be shared. With a quick snapshot, a client can see the details of how they’re tracking with their goal, as well as see how close they are with a compelling visual graph.

Collaborative Discovery Process

The Asset-Map Discovery questionnaire simplifies a task that many advisors struggle to complete—getting accurate and complete information from clients at the beginning of the relationship.

The Discovery questionnaire takes a process that can be confusing and overwhelming for the average consumer and turns it into a delightful, straight-forward experience. The questionnaire is short, to the point, and its intuitive design makes it possible for clients to complete without getting frustrated.

The real value of the Discovery questionnaire, though, is to get clients more involved in the planning process early on. When you approach a relationship in this way, your client becomes a co-planner with you rather than an outsider looking in on your process.

What Financial Advisors Say About Asset-Map

It’s one thing to read about the benefits of Asset-Map. It’s quite another to hear an advisor tell their story and how Asset-Map has helped them to engage clients more completely.

One of our users, Mark Seebeck, spoke to us about his firm and summarized Asset-Map’s value to him like this:

“Clients don’t want to see a mountain of paperwork. They want to see what they have, what it’s doing for them, and what they’ll use it for in the future. Asset-Map is the only solution we’ve found that can provide all that information on a page.”

Want to see how you can reduce paperwork and get to a one-page visual plan with your clients too? 

Click here to read about how Mark did it with his firm, Seebeck & Associates.