Improve Client Investment Planning with RazorPlan’s New Individual Assets Feature

At RazorPlan, product enhancements are driven by the customers who use the platform every day. In a recent RazorPlan product survey, users told us that they wanted a better way to capture clients’ multiple investment accounts within a financial plan.

We listened.

With the latest RazorPlan release, we’ve introduced a new Entry Type option across all investment data entry areas including corporate investments, making it easier to reflect a client’s complete investment picture while keeping data entry simple and efficient. Advisors can now enter RRSPs/RRIFs, LIRAs, TFSAs, and Non-registered holdings, and group multiple accounts together before entering the value into the data entry fields.

How it works

The Entry Type feature provides two options, Grouped Assets or Individual Assets. The default setting for this new field is Grouped Assets which means users can enter the total holdings in the Value fields provided on the screen. For advisors who prefer the existing workflow, this familiar data entry method remains unchanged, providing a quick and efficient way to enter the total holdings of an investment type.

Selecting the Individual Assets option unlocks a more detailed way to capture investment information. When this option is selected, the corresponding Edit button enables, and the Value fields below lock indicating that the detailed data can be entered. To enter each account detail, you can click on the Edit button to display the individual assets screen. Any values entered in the grouped assets fields will be displayed in the details screen to maintain data integrity.

In the details screen (see above), data can be added to the following fields:

• Institution: Enter the name of the institution where the investments are held. This text field accepts alpha-numeric characters so enter a description that easily identifies the investment.

• Account: Enter the account name or number of the individual asset. This field accepts alpha-numeric characters and can be used to specify the account information of the individual assets.

• Value: Enter the dollar value of holdings in the account that matches the as of date entered in the Value As of field. Entries in the Value field need to be a number, all values will be added up and displayed on the main data entry screen.

• Spousal Value (RRSP/RRIF only): Enter the dollar value of any spousal holdings in the account. When entering individual assets, the value can only be entered in either the Personal or Spousal values fields, if an amount is entered in both fields, an error message will appear.

• Value as of: Enter a date that corresponds to the amount entered in the Value field. This date can be from any point in the year of the plan and RazorPlan will make the necessary adjustments to include the balance in the January 1st calculations.

• Deposits / Withdrawals to Value as of Date: If the value entered includes any deposits or withdrawals that occurred prior to the date, enter the total amount of deposits or withdrawals that have been made up to the date entered. Withdrawals are entered as negative values to indicate they are withdrawals.

Both the Value as of and the Deposits / Withdrawals to Value as of Date features will factor into the calculation of the investment projections. RazorPlan performs annual calculations so it will always use a January 1st start date. If a value and deposits / withdrawals are entered with a date other than January 1st, the program will adjust the value to make it a January 1st value so that it can be used seamlessly in the projection calculations.

Once all the details of an individual investment have been entered and you click the Close button, the total of all values entered will be displayed in the Value field of the data entry tab, greyed out. This total will then be used in the projections and will grow using the rates of returns entered in the Settings | Plan Assumptions area of the program.

To complement the enhanced data entry experience, selecting Individual Assets also makes a dedicated Investment Accounts page available in the generated report. This provides advisors with an easy way to give clients a clear, itemized view of their investment holdings. This page of the report will display all the data entered for each individual account, organized by investment type (i.e RRSPs, TFSAs, etc.) This page will also display the January 1st value that the calculations are using for the forward-looking projections.

In response to customer feedback, we developed this enhancement to give advisors greater flexibility in documenting individual investment accounts while keeping the planning process intuitive. It also helps create more informative client reports and facilitates meaningful conversations about how each investment contributes to a client’s overall financial plan.