List of latest improvements delivered
Note that the Xplan version reflects the point at which some of the features become available in a version but they may not have been enabled for your site. Changes only appear in the release notes when made available to all sites.
Full details for each of these items are in the release notes within the “What’s New in Xplan” hub - sitting within your Xplan site under the relevant version number.
Enhanced fact find improvements
This is currently available to our Essentials clients and we’ve picked up a number of suggestions recently which we are happy to have delivered:
Income and expense fields are now captured later in the journey
Previously, if you followed the flow of the fact find, you would capture income and expenses near the start and then reach the plan screens which also asked you for income / expenses related to that plan. This could include information such as mortgage repayments, property income, insurance premiums or pension contributions. Adding these details in again would result in duplicates.
Now, the usual flow is to capture the plan details first, so that by the time you reach the income and expense pages, much of it will already have been populated.
Plan level notes added to all plan pages
You told us that you valued the ability to make your own notes against individual plans (assets, liabilities, pensions etc). Previously, there were general notes fields on each section, so we now show a notes page per plan. This feeds into the other plan pages within the rest of the client record.
Validation on the vulnerability section
We have introduced some additional help for users working on updating the vulnerability section. There is a top level (Does the client currently need any additional support?) field, which is the “Is your client vulnerable?” in Client focus.
Underneath is the table containing a list of all vulnerabilities recorded for that person - some of which may be historic, temporary or permanent.
If you select to move away from the page, the fact find will check if the Yes / No at that top level is accurate based on the table entries, i.e.
- The vulnerable indicator is set to “Yes” but no “active” vulnerabilities have been recorded in the table, OR
- The vulnerable indicator is set to “No” but there are still “active” vulnerabilities in place
We will simply present a warning to the user here, so they have an opportunity to correct it before moving on.
Cash based assets display
You wanted a way of keeping cash based assets away from other, investment based assets. As such we now show them separately in their own section. If an asset has a subtype of Cash ISA, Bank / Savings account or Platform Cash Account, it will be shown in this new Cash section.
Portfolio Group capabilities
Portfolio group functionality is well established within Xplan, but there used to be limited rules available to control who they were visible to. If you haven’t used them before, they are used to group together client portfolios with a common characteristic, such as clients invested in the same model portfolio. Grouped portfolios can then be managed consistently - e.g. collectively reported on, used in searches or portfolio analysis.
The groups themselves could be made public to everyone on an Xplan site which is not always appropriate. This change introduced new capabilities to control their visibility:
- Set Portfolio Group to My Groups — Allows the user to share a Portfolio Group with their own groups.
- Set Portfolio Group to Private — Allows the user to restrict a Portfolio Group to themselves only.
- Set Portfolio Group to Public — Allows the user to make a Portfolio Group visible to all system users.
Client Access reports now available in CSV format
The two key client access management reports - Client Access Log and Client Access Expiry Date - were previously only available in PDF format. You told us that you would like to be able to analyse this data more efficiently, which PDFs aren’t designed to make easy. You now have the option of generating the report in CSV format, making for easy analysis in Excel or Google Sheets.
Employment linked incomes in Xport
You wanted an easier way of creating an Xport for client employment income, which could be useful for client demographic analysis. You can now select the new “Linked income” datasource underneath “Employments”, meaning you can generate this report in one go.
Cover Type now included as a data source for custom choice fields
Whilst we always aim to support data points within the core Xplan product, there will be occasions when site administrators want to create their own custom fields. Best practice for custom choice (dropdown) fields, is to use another field as a data source so that data stays consistent across a site.
The Cover Type field within Insurance was not previously available to select as a data source, so we’ve fixed that by including it.
Financial lifecycle phase - new field available
You asked for a more consistent, reliable way to be able to record the financial lifecycle phase of a client - i.e. whether they were in accumulation, decumulation or hybrid (partly in both). This has now been added and made available in Field Definitions, meaning your site administrator can add it to the appropriate screen / page for your team.
We have also added support for this within the Enhanced fact find.
Policy number and description display in platform and pension wrappers
You explained that, when linking products to a platform or pension wrapper within the client record, that it was sometimes hard work to pick out the right product, particularly if two plans had the same provider and subtype.
So we have added the contents of the policy number and description fields on each plan so that you can easily identify the right product to link to the wrapper. We show this on the main Products tab within the wrapper record as well as the popup window which allows you to select / unselect the linked plans.
The Reviews list now shows completed date / time
This was a popular one - many of you asked for an easy way to look at a client’s review history and see not only the date it was due, but also the day it was completed. This information was already available via Xport, but we know that sometimes you want to be able to quickly glance at the information in the context of a client.
To make it really visible, we also added this information to the edit page as well, so it’s available either on the Reviews list / table but also on the form when you select to edit a review.
Filtering and grouping for Xports
This was a popular request from those of you with a long list of Xports to manage. Locating the right ones was fiddly - you had to use Ctrl+F on the page to find the report you were looking for. There was also the risk that you picked the wrong report or didn’t run all of the reports you needed because they often ended up out of order.
There is a detailed release note for this already, but I will replay the key benefits here:
- Quick filter
- This provides a way for you to find reports without using the browser’s Ctrl+F function. If you know the name of the specific report you want, start to type in the name and the screen will immediately filter down to matching reports (and group headings if enabled). This saves time for those of you who regularly run a report - and the new filter is right at the top of the screen.
- Grouping
- If you have a suite of reports you usually run - e.g. a subject access request, month end reporting, compliance reports etc, then it is easy to forget one or two.
- Grouping can be enabled based on the first part of a report name, separated from the rest of the report name via a separator character - a bar character (|), a hyphen (-) or a colon (:).
- We acknowledge that this may involve some manual effort to rename your reports, but we think it’s worth the time.
- It can handle spurious spaces which is easy to do when keying in report names - it will strip those away and give you a nice, clean heading.
- Controls
- You decide when you’d like to enable this - see Admin > Site > System Settings > Client focus > Xport.
- You choose which character you would like to act as the separator between the group name and the report name.
Money Purchase Annual Allowance
We have created some additional fields to complement the existing “Has the client triggered the MPAA?” field. The aim is to improve reporting around this area and remove the reliance on custom fields or document notes. The new fields are:
- Date the MPAA was triggered
- MPAA trigger reason - a choice field (Flexi-access drawdown, UFPLS, Flexibly annuity, Standalone lump sum, Exceeding capped drawdown limit or Other). This field can be configured by your site administrator if needed
- MPAA trigger details - a one line text field to support the selection above
Your site administrator will be able to add these fields to your site in the appropriate place(s). For our Essentials clients, we have added them to the Retirement > Pensions page in Client focus, in the Individual fact find (Pension & Drawdown page) and the Enhanced fact find (Retirement details page). The standard Essentials fact find report template has also been updated to accommodate these fields.
Emergency fund details
We were asked to improve the data capture around a client’s emergency fund information. From the conversations we had, we know that there are a variety of ways you might want to record this - a fixed monetary amount, a percentage of income or a description such as “3 months expenses”. To cater for everyone, we opted for the description field. This is backed up by a Yes / No field which can facilitate reporting across your client bank on who has / hasn’t got an emergency fund recorded.
Again, your site administrator can choose where to place these fields. For our Essentials clients, we have added them to the Individual fact find (Financial Status page) and the Enhanced fact find (Affordability page).
Platform Provider field
We had received feedback from a number of you using the Platform Provider field. This is a mandatory non-configurable field when the Platform field is set to “Yes”, so it meant if the platform you wanted to specify wasn’t in the list, you wouldn’t be able to save the plan.
We have now added “Morningstar Wealth Platform” as another option, plus an option of “Other” to unblock anyone wanting to indicate that the product is held on a platform even if the platform isn’t currently available in the list.
On behalf of the Iress team, thank you to everyone who has submitted and continues to submit ideas and suggestions for improvement. We are committed to continuously improving Xplan and your feedback helps us make sure that we deliver what matters to you.
