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eMoney Advisor is placing a big bet on the future of “self-guided” financial planning, linking the firm’s retirement plan footprint with a new mobile application, currently called “Project Avocado.” Introduced at the eMoney Summit in Austin, Texas, Avocado is a mobile app targeted at retirement plan participants, which will show users their spending habits and challenge them to make behavioral changes.
Avocado has two major consumer-facing aspects, said Jess Liberi, head of product at eMoney. It nudges users into making small behavioral changes, by making users more aware of spending habits, which the firm hopes will add up to more responsible financial behavior over time. It also deconstructs financial planning into an advisor-less app, with the goal of providing a more approachable ladder to financial planning.
What’s in it for advisors? eMoney expects that as users’ situations get more financially complex, they will eventually decide they need a financial advisor. Users will already be engaged in the app via their workplace retirement plan offering, so eMoney could potentially have years of spending data that could easily make its way into a full-blown financial plan, presented to a client by an advisor. Advisors using eMoney, the...