NZ Funds’ WealthPlan software writes financial plans at the push of a button, and its myWealth tech passes $800m.

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NZ Funds Media Release
1 May 2019

Auckland, New Zealand – NZ Funds announced today that its plan writing technology is now writing 71 plans a month and its myWealth technology was used by around 11,000 clients with over $800 million of assets. NZ Funds says its mission, to be the leader in wealth technology in New Zealand by 2020, is “well on track” according to Damon Murfitt, Chief Technology Officer at NZ Funds. To substantiate his claim, Murfitt pointed to two areas in which he believes NZ Funds leads.

“Six years ago we designed New Zealand’s first robo adviser. However, we found that, as is often the case, technology and innovation had outpaced the law. The regulation in New Zealand at that time did not contemplate the provision of electronic advice so we could not launch it, so we pivoted and launched myWealth as freeware instead” says Murfitt.

In March, NZ Funds’ myWealth software was used by 11,000 clients with over $800 million of assets. Murfitt says clients are using the technology to plan their retirement and that the fact that the software takes New Zealanders’ houses and mortgages into account is a big differentiator over more recently launched tech. “How can anyone plan if they don’t take their largest asset and liability into account?”.

“The big breakthrough for us occurred this year when we added automatic plan writing capability to our WealthPlan software for financial advisers. WealthPlan enables clients, in conjunction with their financial adviser, to automatically produce a full financial plan with only the click of a button.”

The plan “fully scripts” a writeup of who the client is: age, stage, risk profile, investment approach, current and future investment decisions and automatically models the effect of drawings in retirement without the adviser having to type anything.

The software is not AI – yet – as the adviser still oversees the process. “Just like Uber, and Google’s Waymo autonomous driving technology, we have stopped short of going full robot. The plans our technology is writing are still being overseen, reviewed and signed off by our nationwide network of AFAs.”

“Our take is that clients will continue to choose by adviser and not by technology for some time to come, but if that were ever to change we could offer them an unrivalled digital experience.” So for now NZ Funds is choosing not to go full robo.

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