NaviPlan financial planning products for desktop computers will be discontinued as the owner develops its NaviPro products for online use.
In a “product sunset notification” to advisers who use the desktop platform, Zywave, now known as Advicent Solutions, is offering the NaviPro group of financial planning products as a substitute for the discontinued NaviPlan Extended Desktop, NaviPlan Standard Desktop and similar products. Clients still will be able to use the discontinued products until March 31.
Zywave's Financial Solutions Division — which includes NaviPlan and NaviPro — will remain with its current private-equity owner but as of Monday changed its name to Advicent Solutions. Zywave's owner is Vista Equity Partners.
The discontinuation notice, which points to “an ever-changing marketplace,” came as a surprise to at least one adviser who uses NaviPlan.
“This caught me off guard this morning,” said Carolyn McClanahan, founder of Life Planning Partners Inc.
The adviser said she has used NaviPlan for a dozen years and is sorry to see it go, especially since she doesn't know whether Advicent will help her move all her client data to a new platform.
Advicent officials did not return calls for comment by press time.
“I'm not pleased with how fast they decided to do it,” Ms. McClanahan said. “The desktop version is beautiful because it's easy to move to things quickly rather than move from screen to screen.”
Ms. McClanahan said she had just hired a new planner who uses the eMoney Advisor financial planning platform, and she now plans to review all the available platforms to see which one best suits her firm's needs.
In October, Zywave announced a host of new features on NaviPlan that it said would help advisers be more efficient and create more opportunities to interact with clients. However, in early November Zywave announced that it was selling both its name and its Insurance Solutions Division to Aurora Capital Group, a private-equity firm. That firm is keeping the Zywave name.
As recently as a couple of months ago, Zywave said it had no plans to discontinue NaviPlan, according to Joel Bruckstein, co-founder of the T3 financial-services technology conferences. But Mr. Bruckstein said the move to online, from desktop, didn't surprise him.
“It wasn't a matter of if, it was a matter of when,” he said. “NaviPlan was desktop. It was expensive. It goes along with the whole split between Zywave and Advicent. They've got to be profitable, obviously, and I don't know how many users there are left.”
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