Overview

Financial planning involves more than calculating whether a client has enough money for the future. It requires understanding how income, expenses, assets, liabilities, pensions, investments, tax considerations, and personal goals interact over time.

We designed a financial planning experience that brings these elements together into an interactive model. The experience allows advisers to build a complete view of a client’s financial position, explore different scenarios, understand potential outcomes, and connect planning directly to the wider advice process.

The goal was to move financial planning away from static calculations and disconnected data and towards an experience where advisers and clients can actively explore financial decisions together.

The challenge

Financial information can be difficult to understand when it is presented as disconnected numbers, tables, and projections.

Advisers need to understand where a client is today, what they want to achieve, and how different financial decisions could affect their future. Clients, meanwhile, need a way to understand those decisions without having to interpret complex financial models themselves.

The planning experience needed to make it easier to:

• Build a complete financial picture

• Capture and organise financial information

• Define and prioritise client goals

• Model income and expenditure over time

• Understand cash flow and financial sustainability

• Explore different financial scenarios

• Compare potential decisions

• Visualise complex financial information

• Connect planning with risk and investment decisions

• Turn financial projections into meaningful conversations

• Feed planning outcomes into the wider advice workflow

Building a complete financial picture

The planning model brings together the financial information required to understand a client’s current position.

This includes:

• Income

• Expenses

• Assets

• Liabilities

• Pensions

• Investments

• Tax information

• Financial goals

• Risk information

Rather than treating each piece of information independently, the model creates relationships between them. This provides the foundation for understanding how a client’s financial position could change over time.

From financial data to a planning model

The planning experience transforms structured client information into a model that advisers can work with.

Information captured during the wider advice journey becomes part of the financial plan, reducing the need to work across disconnected tools or repeatedly recreate the same information.

This creates a shared foundation for modelling, scenario planning, and advice.

Client information → Financial plan → Scenarios → Advice

Goals-based planning

Financial planning starts with understanding what the client wants to achieve.

Goals become part of the planning model rather than remaining as separate notes or discussion points. This creates a direct relationship between a client’s objectives and the financial resources available to support them.

Goals can provide context for questions such as:

• Can the client achieve their desired retirement timeline?

• How much can they afford to contribute?

• What happens if spending changes?

• How could a different retirement date affect the plan?

• How resilient is the plan under different assumptions?

This makes the financial plan more relevant to the decisions a client actually needs to make.

Cash flow modelling

Cash flow modelling provides a way to understand how income, spending, assets, and financial commitments may evolve over time.

The experience helps advisers explore:

• Income and expenditure

• Surplus and deficit

• Future cash requirements

• Retirement timelines

• Changes in contributions

• Asset drawdown

• Long-term financial sustainability

Instead of showing a single number or static projection, the model provides a view of how the client’s financial position can change across different periods.

Making cash flow understandable

Cash flow can be difficult to communicate when it is represented only through spreadsheets or large tables.

We introduced visual representations that make changes easier to understand at a glance. Advisers can use these views to identify periods of surplus or deficit, understand changes over time, and discuss potential financial pressure points with clients.

The visualisation layer turns complex financial calculations into information that can support a conversation.

Scenario planning

A central part of the experience is the ability to explore different potential futures.

Rather than treating a financial plan as fixed, scenario modelling allows advisers to change assumptions and understand how those changes could affect potential outcomes.

Scenarios can include:

• Base plan

• Adjusted contribution

• Different retirement timeline

• Changes to spending

• Alternative financial assumptions

• Stress scenario

Comparing different futures

Scenario planning becomes particularly useful when alternatives can be viewed side by side.

For example, changing a contribution level or retirement date can affect the longer-term financial position. The experience makes those differences visible so advisers and clients can discuss the trade-offs involved.

Instead of asking clients to imagine how a decision might affect their future, advisers can use the planning model to demonstrate potential changes within the context of the wider financial plan.

Making financial outcomes visible

The planning experience uses visualisations to communicate:

• Cash flow

• Retirement timelines

• Asset distribution

• Risk

• Surplus and deficit

• Differences between scenarios

• Changes in financial position over time

The visual layer helps users move from raw financial data to a clearer understanding of potential outcomes.

This is particularly important when working with clients who may not be familiar with financial modelling. The interface provides a more accessible way to understand the relationship between financial decisions and potential outcomes.

Planning workspace

The planning workspace gives advisers a dedicated environment for building and reviewing financial plans.

Financial inputs, goals, models, scenarios, and outputs are brought together in one place, allowing advisers to move between different parts of the plan without losing context.

The workspace also creates a foundation for reviewing plans over time as a client’s circumstances and goals change.

Risk within financial planning

Financial planning cannot be separated from risk.

The platform brings the client’s risk profile, goals, financial position, and selected investments into the wider planning context. This allows planning and investment decisions to be considered together rather than treated as separate activities.

Risk information can therefore influence how different scenarios are understood and how potential recommendations are evaluated.

Connecting planning to advice

The financial plan becomes part of the broader advice workflow.

Planning information connects with:

• Risk assessment

• Portfolio selection

• Investment decisions

• Suitability

• Advice documentation

This creates a continuous path from understanding the client’s current position to exploring potential futures and developing financial advice.

The plan is not simply an output. It becomes an active part of the advice process.

Turning planning into conversation

Financial planning is most useful when it helps advisers and clients make better decisions together.

Interactive scenarios allow advisers to show how different decisions could affect potential outcomes. This makes complex financial concepts easier to discuss and gives clients a clearer understanding of the trade-offs involved.

Instead of delivering a static projection, the planning experience creates space for exploration, questions, and conversation.

Designing for clarity

A key part of the experience was making a complex financial model feel understandable without removing the depth advisers need.

The interface separates complex financial information into clear sections while maintaining the relationships between them.

The experience is designed to help users move naturally between:

What is happening now → What do I want to achieve → What could happen → What can I change → What should I do next

This creates a planning experience that supports both detailed analysis and client-facing conversations.

A connected planning model

The planning experience is built as part of the wider Zugo product ecosystem.

Client data → Financial plan → Goals → Cash flow → Scenarios → Risk → Advice

Financial information feeds into the planning model. Goals provide direction, cash flow provides a view of financial sustainability, and scenarios allow advisers to explore potential changes.

The resulting insights then contribute to the wider advice workflow.

Supporting ongoing financial planning

Financial planning is not a one-time activity. A client’s circumstances, goals, income, spending, investments, and priorities can change over time.

The connected planning model provides a foundation for reviewing and updating plans as those circumstances change.

This makes the planning experience useful beyond the initial advice process and supports an ongoing relationship between advisers and clients.

Technology

The web application uses React, Vite, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Ant Design, React Query, Redux, Recharts, Bun, Express, PostgreSQL, Prisma, Redis, and BullMQ.

Recharts supports the visualisation layer used to communicate cash flow, timelines, scenario differences, and other financial information.

The technology stack supports a responsive planning experience while providing the underlying infrastructure required to manage structured financial data and longer-running processes.

Result

The result is an interactive financial planning experience that turns complex financial information into understandable models, visualisations, and future scenarios.

By connecting goals, cash flow, assets, liabilities, risk, investments, and advice, the platform makes financial planning a continuous part of the wider wealth management experience rather than a standalone calculation tool.

For advisers, it provides a structured environment for building and reviewing financial plans. For clients, it creates a clearer way to understand their financial position and explore the potential impact of different decisions.

Most importantly, the experience turns financial planning from a static output into an interactive part of the advice conversation.