Why Wells Fargo is adding the eMoney planning tool for its advisers

As it realigns and consolidates its brokerage network, Wells Fargo Advisors is also in the process of introducing a highly popular financial planning tool, eMoney, to its more than 13,000 financial advisers.

For years, Wells Fargo Advisors has touted its in-house investment management and planning platform for clients and advisers, called Envision. Now it is introducing the outside eMoney Advisor, first introducing it to its group of several hundred private bankers over the winter before a wider introduction to its wealth management advisers this summer.

Adding eMoney -- which is widely popular among registered investment advisers and advisers at independent broker-dealers -- could be a help to recruiting, several industry sources said. Advisers would be more easily able to continue financial planning for clients on the eMoney platform after they start working at Wells Fargo Advisors.

"Advisers like to stick to their financial planning tools," said Alois Pirker, research director with the Aite Group. "They get used to it and it's an important part of the client-to-adviser communication platform to set goals."

Wells Fargo Advisors' competition at the three other wirehouses, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and UBS, each have their own financial planning processes for advisers. Wells Fargo Advisors is likely the first wirehouse to add eMoney.

Merrill Lynch developed its own planning platform, called Personal Wealth Analysis, and introduced it last summer.

Morgan Stanley has both a proprietary platform, Goals Planning System, along with outside vendors, including MoneyGuidePro, a key competitor to eMoney.

At UBS, the primary planning products are MoneyGuidePro and Advicent, the vendor for NaviPlan.

Wells Fargo is looking for ways to modernize its brokerage and planning platforms for clients and financial advisers, a company executive said in an interview.

EMoney "has advanced planning capabilities for high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients," said Michael Liersch, head of advice and planning and the Wealth and Investment group at Wells Fargo. "One key example is thinking about how money travels to beneficiaries, and eMoney has the ability to show that."

Two years ago, Jim Hays, a veteran of the firm, was tapped as the new head of Wells Fargo Advisors. He's been overseeing a series of changes ever since in order to simplify the sprawling network of bank brokers, wealth managers, independent reps and private bankers, including its exit from the international wealth management business.