The first phase of the Client Center project was originally completed about a year and a half ago, and so much has changed since then.
Specifically, there are major third-party integrations.
The Document Vault connects to the Sharefile API which is a very secure service that Financial Symmetry uses to store client documents. The financial advisors use these documents to prepare a financial plan and keep track of whether the client is on the right path for their goals. These goals can be managed from the online dashboard and advisors are notified about any changes that are made.
The Accounts page connects with a service called Yodlee, which used to be the backbone of Mint.com until Intuit bought Mint and then created their own back-end system to authenticate and gather transactions from banking institutions. We use Yodlee to gather transactions from credit cards, bank accounts, and keep track of loans, like a mortgage, and use this to line up to client goals automatically. The Transaction Summary is what we’ve built – which has a lot of functionality of Mint.com – for Financial Symmetry’s clients. Clients can see their categorized transactions and compare them against their financial plan targets that are set by their advisors. There are also advanced features like splitting transactions, setting automation rules to always categorize a type of transaction, etc.
There is a Profile page that allows clients to only do a few limited things, for now. They can set a profile picture and change their username. The picture is useful for advisors to visualize the clients they are managing and provide personalization to the dashboard.
There are many things we continue to work on to build this robust financial application. We are working on automated emails and a new client set up questionnaire, just to name a few things! We’ll be providing continuous updates on this project, so stay tuned!
