Tech Review: Should you consider Avelo Wealth Optimiser?

Mark Loosmore of AT8 Group gets a sneak preview of new financial planning tool Avelo Wealth Optimiser.

This company’s transformation – from 1st Software – The Exchange and N4 to Avelo – is quite astounding. There have been no half measures in moving to the new branding. As you enter the office you are greeted by a large new Avelo sign introducing the new brand, and throughout the building there is new artwork with the Avelo theme (even the coffee cups have changed).

There has been quite a lot of industry comment about the Avelo name change, although we felt some of this was inevitable as a number of strong brand names are being removed. At AT8, we are open-minded regarding the new brand, and feel the disjointed branding of the past was not sustainable: a fresh approach was long overdue.

For those still slightly confused about the branding (I included myself in that category before my visit), the old company names (1st Software, 1st – The Exchange, N4 and Screen Business) and product names previously introduced that have not gained traction, such as Exweb, are brands that have been removed.

Although Avelo is clearly the overriding brand, strong product brands remain with Avelo Adviser Office (AO) as the brand for the back-office and the trading portal as Avelo Exchange.

Brand consolidation

Bringing the disparate brands together into a single name and style is only the first step. The next, and most important, phase of brand development is to consolidate the disparate product ranges into a clear, cohesive proposition, and we are waiting to see if this occurs.

Certainly, when I spoke to Paul Yates, business development director at Avelo, he gave the clearest articulation of the product strategy that we have heard from Avelo for many years. The first core strand of the strategy is to branch out its adviser tools across distribution channels, with Wealth Optimiser and Client Portal being the first manifestations of its strategy.

The second part of the strategy is to strengthen the automation of transacting business via the Avelo Exchange portal. The pipeline tracking service now being rolled out is the first part of the implementation of the grand plan. All new solutions have to fit within a single technical framework to ensure they are combined into a single integrated strategy.

Although with a legacy of different products and technologies to integrate, we are unclear as to how the reality of the strategy will manifest itself. Indeed, with Wealth Optimiser, one of the first releases, remaining a thick client architecture (albeit able to be run as a Citrix-hosted solution) we do not yet know whether there will be a move to a true, online, SaaS platform, as some see the future, or whether Avelo’s vision is steered along a different course by its ongoing client engagement programme.

Yates openly admits that Avelo has been slow in bringing product to market, but he is clear that this has changed and the new products being launched are a testament to its new drive.

The challenge remains about how they will manage the legacy products. With future initiatives such as the Adviser Portal (an online set of Adviser tools for business management) it has the opportunity to provide customers with a migration path to the more modern framework of tools when they are ready.

Maintaining the legacy products, which have been very successful, is a costly strategy, but is one Avelo says that it has built into its future plans.