AMA: We’re Dela Dzadey and Lana Graham, paraplanning and Xtools experts, Ask Us Anything!
Got a burning question? Join us here on Wednesday 22nd May from 2pm to 2:30pm.
For those who don’t know us, I’m Dela Dzadey, director and advice manager at TNT Group, helping bridge the efficiency gaps in advice production for advisers and paraplanners. lana.graham is the Xtools product manager and resident expert at Iress, and we’ll be hanging out here to answer any questions you have. In the meantime, you can start popping your questions below and Ask Us Anything!
Update: This AMA has now ended but please continue to pop your questions down below or in the discussion forums and make sure you tag me at deladz or lana.graham
Hi lana.graham , i have a question for company projections in xtools +. What is the best way to show these? from company financials. Is there any tutorial how we go about it?
going to Input > Basic Details and the Entities section, where you can model up to 3 Company entities.
For each Company entity you will need to navigate to the Input > Company screens to enter the company details (if you have access to Iress Learning Centre then see pages 64 to 67 of this guide).
With the Company set up you can then complete your modelling as required.
To view projected information, simply navigate to the Display > Company screens eg. Consolidated or Taxation etc. (see pages 104 to 108 of the guide). Each of these screens allow you to download a PDF version of the information you are seeing on screen through the PDF button that is in the top right of the screen.
Should you need to have any of the information on screen formatted in a certain way or into a report, then you would need to create an Xmerge document (a coded document) that could then extract whichever of the projected fields you wish, to create the document as you require.
If you have access to the Iress Learning Centre, then this eLearning course will take you through how to model a Company entity using Xtools+, and this coding guide gives an introduction to using Xmerge coding.
I worry your post might not be easily visible to the rest of the community as this is an old AMA thread. Would you mind posting it again as a new thread here?
All you need to press is 'Start a Discussion' at the top of the page. Let me know if you need assistance!
If I wish to establish a minimum pension payment for a client, with the deficit cash flow initially being allocated solely to him for the first 10 years, after the10 years, all Deficit cashflow will be allocated to him and his partner pension payments 50% each. how to do it on projection cashflow?
deladz in my paraplanner days, I always found it a challenge to reduce the time it took me to write an SOA as I was always tempted to go into too much detail! What are the low value areas you see paraplanners spending too much time on?
We work across several different SoA wizards and templates, and we find the wizards with sections that dont seem to feed into anything in the plan (and templates that don't run in logical order) can be very time consuming to work on.
The final area that eats away at our time is flowcharts! We are still looking and open to any suggestions for a simple and quick flowchart tool😀
Cashflow deficits - will there be functionality to draw cashflow deficits from an investment bond? Perhaps like we can do with super, being after preservation age or tax free age, with the bond being able to elect to draw before or after the 10 year withdrawal period.
Small thing, however, when we have pension tables come through into the advice document, it includes the ICR for each fund. Is it possible to have this come through for super accounts?
I had a feeling users would ask to draw a deficit from investment bonds! Unfortunately we had to draw the line somewhere and move onto other important work. We’ll be doing some work to improve Asset, Liability and Cashflow modelling later this year and into 2025 and Investment Bonds will be high on the list when we get to improving Cashflow. We’ll keep the age and 10 year options in mind.
Regarding the ICR/Pension tables. Is the ICR information for Super being drawn from Xtools+ or Wealthsolver? I think this may be something for our Wealthsolver team.
I will keep an eye out on future changes to cashflow relating to bonds. Hopefully it is something that can be brought in as I do use a lot of bonds.
For the ICR's, I enter these in XTools+ so when comparing super / pension projections, it will show a difference from current to proposed even if the risk profiles and contributions remain the same. When exporting the tables into Word, the pension tables show the ICR entered into XTools+ however the super tables don't.
deladz in your latest piece, you talked about the increasing demand paraplanning services and how external paraplanners have "never been busier". What would you say is the primary contributing factor here? Is it just the increasing complexity of the advice proposition? Or are planners leaning more on paraplanning support so as to scale up their operations? Or both/neither?
Thanks Alex, great question! There are definitely some 'complex' areas of advice that we paraplanners so more frequently than advisers, so they do lean on us to have that expertise. We are however, finding that the increase in demand for paraplanning services is across all complexities and even review documents. Most advisers i speak to feel that their time is being drained by many areas that aren't client facing (administration, research, ongoing services, compliance). They want to have a trusted partner that can handle the bulk of this for them, while they can focus on seeing clients. Experienced paraplanners give the advisers confidence that strategy discussions and research of products can be done in a time efficient and compliant manner. That then frees up the adviser's time to see more clients - leading to more advice and work for the paraplanners too!
I'd like to know how to customise the return on an investment profile selected for a superannuation account in an Xtools scenario. I know it's possible for non-super assets but can this option be applied to super accounts only?
You can set a custom return for super. Note that you need to change the Investment Profile to one of the standard investment profiles instead of the Client, Partner or Joint Risk Profile. You can see the difference between Bob and Betty's Rates in the screen shot below:
A couple of other points:
Your licensee may have set a limit on the returns you use, so that it can’t exceed the return for the investment profile selected. In this case, if you want to maximise the return projected, you may need to select the most aggressive investment profile.
Did you know you can adjust all of the investment returns in a single place under Investment Returns? See below:
deladzI know you are very focused on boosting efficiency. What are some strategies or tips you have recently implemented that have helped move the dial?
Thanks primrose.foster. We find that this time of year is especially hectic for our industry. Everyone is feeling the pressure and things can start to fall through the cracks. Putting in place clear and simple processes within your practice (and also individually) during the slower periods, means that there is less pressure and confusion when things are busier. I realise this doesn't help anyone now that things are busy, so if you are finding things start to fall apart, use checklists! They should be short, simple and clear for anyone who needs to use them.
Thanks deladz , this is a good reminder to get your processes in check in those periods of downtime so you are less stressed when everything ramps up! I love a to-do list as well - keeps me on top of my workload when there are lots of moving parts.
Hope that I'm not too late: 1, a couple, husband and wife with a larger age gap, they both are eligible to receive age pension. By the time the wife at her 80, husband already over 95 but age pension still last forever. Do we have a plan to choose age pension up to life expectancy instead of forever?
2) when I model a lifetime guarantee annuity, the payment is only paid up to the guarantee period e.g. challenger guarantee for 16 years and the payment continues only up to 16 years instead of lifetime, am I correct to say that the projection only last until life expectancy, can it be longer (e.g. longest expectancy)?
I know other area in xplan is not part of the discussion here, but can you please pass on, the balance we enter in superannuation plan, can the preserved amount (instead of amount) also allow to % (as most of the time it would be 100% preserved).
Thanks for coming over to Advisely to ask your questions :)
1) It sounds like you’d like the projection to show you the wife’s financial situation if/when her husband dies. This is not the first time we have heard this request. This would be a huge undertaking, considering the various changes to Centrelink and Tax treatment when someone transitions from Couple to Single, so its not something we can do in the near future - but we’ll keep it in mind because we can see that many users want it.
For the mean-time, you can adjust the husband’s Age Pension down to $0 from the year of his life expectancy by going to the Pension Details Display screen and entering adjustments in the row highlighted.
2) The first step to modelling your Challenger annuity is to understand exactly which product it is. Below is an example from Challenger’s PDS of their Flexible Income product (standard death benefit).
Since you mentioned longest life expectancy, it sounds like the client has nominated a reversionary beneficiary, so set reversionary (highlighted blue) to Yes.
3) Regarding your request for a % field for Preservation components: Coincidentally, we’re just about to start a project to look at adding more standard inputs to Client Focus. However I don’t believe it would be correct to add a % field for Preservation, since the preservation amounts are locked in as fixed dollars until age 65, at which time the balance becomes 100% unrestricted non preserved. I’m keen to hear about any other fields you’d like to see in Client Focus, to then be imported to Xtools.
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