Exploring the latest in Defaqto Engage: A comprehensive roundup of new features and enhancements.
Guest Blog Writer: Roger Perry, Head of Intermediary Sales at Defaqto
11 November 2024More than 30% of advisers are already using Engage to give their businesses a competitive edge, with recommendations of over £50 billion passing through the system. Thanks to Engage's seamless two-way integration with back-office systems like Intelliflo Office, Plannr, and Xplan, advisers benefit from less rekeying and fewer errors. This integration ensures a consistent methodology and a repeatable advice process that supports ongoing suitability and strengthens compliance.
These enhancements aren’t just about adding functionality; they’re about refining and future-proofing your advice process. With Engage’s latest updates, this all-in-one platform simplifies complex advice journeys, strengthens client relationships, and ensures compliance with ease. Whether you’re already familiar with Engage or exploring it for the first time.
This roundup covers cutting-edge tools like the MPS Comparator, Product and Platform switching and a refreshed user experience coming soon. Dive in to see how these updates can help you make smarter financial decisions and stay ahead in today’s fast-paced market.
Defaqto MPS Comparator
The recently launched Defaqto MPS Comparator stands as the industry’s first and only tool that enables direct, like-for-like comparisons across Managed Portfolio Service (MPS) portfolios with similar characteristics. Available within Defaqto Engage, this tool seamlessly integrates into the financial planning process, empowering advisers to confidently and compliantly assess MPS portfolios for their clients.With MPS Comparator, you gain access to an unparalleled depth of analysis, covering over 120 Discretionary Fund Managers (DFMs) and approximately 2,700 portfolios. By utilising a comprehensive set of performance metrics and asset allocation data, advisers can now make side-by-side comparisons to recommend the most suitable products tailored to each client’s needs.
This innovation arrives at a pivotal moment. MPS recommendations surged by nearly 14% last year, reaching £85.8 billion, opening a significant opportunity for advisers eager to tap into this expanding market. However, evaluating MPS solutions remains a complex process, as advisers must navigate benchmarks like IA Sectors, ACR, and CPI—often used by providers to gauge portfolio performance but lacking direct comparison. MPS Comparator changes this landscape by simplifying and standardising portfolio assessments, helping advisers meet Consumer Duty obligations and ensure their recommendations offer true value for money.
With MPS Comparator now available to all Defaqto Engage license holders, Engage continues to set new standards in financial planning technology, providing a robust solution to navigate the intricacies of MPS with ease and precision.
Product and platform switching
Launched earlier this year, Product and platform switching is a powerful feature within our end-to-end platform, Engage, designed to streamline investment comparisons and let you focus on helping clients plan for the future.This all-in-one tool allows you to quickly evaluate options across platforms, GIAs, ISAs, Junior ISAs, and bond scenarios, providing detailed, side-by-side analyses. Its Reduction in Yield (RIY) calculator automatically factors in all relevant fees—platform, wrapper, fund, and adviser—giving a clear view of the cost implications of each option. With automated calculations, this unified platform removes the need for multiple tools, saving you time and enabling you to prioritize valuable client interactions. Additionally, Engage offers compliant, in-depth reporting, delivering reliable information to support confident decision-making for both you and your clients.
Coming soon – A sleek new interface
With an end-to-end feature set already in place, Defaqto Engage’s upcoming upgrade to the user experience is set to make it the must-have financial planning system of 2025. After several years of development focused on delivering the tools advisers need—shaped by adviser-led focus groups—the past few months have brought the final touches, adding polish to an already robust platform. Now, with the system’s core features fully developed, attention has shifted to enhancing the overall user experience.The new interface will introduce a more streamlined, intuitive design, allowing advisers and paraplanners to navigate tasks more quickly and efficiently. With clearer, simpler menu options and visually enhanced home screens, the updated user experience is designed to minimise clicks and maximise productivity. New visual overlays further assist users, guiding them through workflows in a smoother, more intelligent manner.
The new user experience makes Defaqto Engage not only a comprehensive tool, but also easy to use - a system purpose-built for the world of financial advice, helping advisers serve clients faster, smarter, and more effortlessly.
Paradigm member firms can claim fully subsidised additional licences.*
With Defaqto Engage you can:
- Offer the best advice every time, with comprehensive research data for product, platform and DFMs, combined with a robust and consistent methodology.
- Identify and agree with your clients’ attitude to investment risk, for either accumulation or decumulation.
- Reduce your compliance risk using a repeatable advice process that supports ongoing suitability.
- Increase AUA by promoting your CIP and/or other preferred investment solutions as well as consolidating external pension, platform and ISA products onto your key platform partners.
*This arrangement applies to any additional Engage licences taken out on top of your firm's current Engage licensing arrangements on or after 5th July 2022.
