Retirement Income Modelling - O&M vs Selectapension vs something else
benjaminfabi
Moderator
Yes, that again!
Thing is, O&M system seems to have come on a long way since the comparison on the old forum. I'm particularly interested to hear from anyone who uses the retirement income planner part of it. The Selectapension system has a good income modeler and shortfall anaylsis but the output is limited and frustrating to manipuate.
A couple of specifics (I know I could ask the companies but this place is independent end user
)
Selectapension does a lovely year by year income report, but seems to think that everyone has a 16 yr life expectancy from date of taking benefits. Does O&M work better?
Same topic, that data could be manipulated beautifully within excel to produce a lovely cash flow chart, but the only way to do that with Selectapension is to manually copy all the values as it can't be exported. Does O&M work better?
We want provide basic retirement income modelling for our clients. Nothing like Voyant levels of complexity. Simply, what their existing provision might provide at a specified date (currently this is done as a snapshot at NRA) and, additionally, how that will change over time with the addition of other income, such as state pension.
Apart from the inbuilt functionality of these two systems, one of which we will always use for switch analysis anyway, is there an alternative that you've used that is better?
Thanks
Thing is, O&M system seems to have come on a long way since the comparison on the old forum. I'm particularly interested to hear from anyone who uses the retirement income planner part of it. The Selectapension system has a good income modeler and shortfall anaylsis but the output is limited and frustrating to manipuate.
A couple of specifics (I know I could ask the companies but this place is independent end user
)Selectapension does a lovely year by year income report, but seems to think that everyone has a 16 yr life expectancy from date of taking benefits. Does O&M work better?
Same topic, that data could be manipulated beautifully within excel to produce a lovely cash flow chart, but the only way to do that with Selectapension is to manually copy all the values as it can't be exported. Does O&M work better?
We want provide basic retirement income modelling for our clients. Nothing like Voyant levels of complexity. Simply, what their existing provision might provide at a specified date (currently this is done as a snapshot at NRA) and, additionally, how that will change over time with the addition of other income, such as state pension.
Apart from the inbuilt functionality of these two systems, one of which we will always use for switch analysis anyway, is there an alternative that you've used that is better?
Thanks
Benjamin Fabi
Comments
We've got O&M coming in shortly to take us through the new modeller and some potential new features so I'll get to have a good play with it. Unfortunately I can't comment on what it does right now as I don't have access to it.
There are more tools coming out to do this such as eValue and several providers have launched tools. This is a perfect topic to do some collaborative research, analysis and comparison to share with the Powwow community. Let's see if we can get @benjaminfabi ;
some answers about O&M first and can anyone else let us know what tool you're using.
Paraplanner. F1, Apple, Nutella, ice cream. No trite motivational quotes. Turning a bit northern.
Ben, I don't have access to the retirement planning tool, but a few options could be
1) talk to SelectaPension, they love feedback and are willing to change things.
2) have a look at Richards MoneyScope tool, it's quick and easy to use and you can get a free months trial. (Shameless plug for you @theparaplanner )
I would be interested to see the new tools that Richard mentioned.
Happy Paraplanning
I've had it for less than 24 hours and all I can say is...Wow.
I mean it was always a good system* but this latest release is looking like it is an incredibly powerful bit of kit. I'm going to be fully road testing the income modelling in the next couple of weeks and I reckon I'm going to be saying good things.
* Disclaimer - I am a former employee of O&M
There's so much scope within O&M and we've liked what we get from it. I think that's why I asked the question in another thread (about Voyant) because O&M does offer quite a bit of kit, but it's not the full monty. I do like it.
Had a look at alternatives but always come back to these two.
I assume you mean because it's about 20% of the cost of the O&M TVAS software!
Paraplanner. F1, Apple, Nutella, ice cream. No trite motivational quotes. Turning a bit northern.
We have Selectapension at the moment and we're happy with it but we were shown the O&M TVAS output recently and it piqued our interest.
Comments here are fairly neutral with no real bias for one or the other but if there is a research project underway on the relative pros and cons i'd like to see it.
I'll add to the discussion if I can but i'm not working on the comparison in my office.
-WGD
SAP will give you a critical yield for your reports and allow sufficient input to deal with most situations. It's designed mainly for the retail advice market and I think costs about £50 a month. It's basic. But that price includes the standard pension switching module too.
O&M caters for practically every permutation of scheme benefits available and costs about 5 times as much. If you've ever had a TVAS report from a provider, it's almost certainly come from a white labelled version of O&M's software. I know the guys at O&M (the TVAS software is now a separate company to the mainstream Profiler software - which was the initial thread here) and if I was doing regular DB work I would be using their software. But it is only a TVAS system, it won't do normal pension switching.
If you're after something to give you a critical yield a couple of times a month then go with SAP, especially if you want the PPP switching bundled in. If you're doing lots of DB work, you are an experienced pension transfer specialist (or work for one) and you want total control and accuracy, get O&M. Or alternatively, they will create the TVAS for you for a fee.
Thank you so much for the info above.
We expect our DB cases to increase and are looking to see if another tool would suit us better. We expect some of the PP team to become specialists for DB work and having the best tool for this would be important.
I know that OMW will do TVAS calcs for free but I wasn't aware that O&M would do it too.
-WGD
O&M won't do it for free though. It's a subscription service where they get a letter of authority from your client to approach the relevant scheme and then produce a TVAS.
Thanks again.
Paraplanner. F1, Apple, Nutella, ice cream. No trite motivational quotes. Turning a bit northern.
Chartered Financial Planner
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Isn't that what it is used for, or am I missing something here?
Hi Ben,
You still using O&M? Interested to see if your experience has changed your thoughts over the last couple of years... (sorry for dragging up a very old post...)
Tony
Hi Tony,
Simple answer is no. I don't use any software for switching comparisons. The retirement modeller, which I did like when I used it, was the bit that made the O&M switching tool the preferred option when I was using software for that purpose. But since I now do simple 'straight line' cost comparisons (occasionally using FE's calculator) for replacement business, any income modelling is done with one of the specific cash flow tools, or excel.
Hope that helps.