eMoney beta tests CoPlanner Chat with 2027 launch expected

eMoney Advisor is beta testing an AI assistant for its CoPlanner planning tool, with the company expecting to launch it in 2027, according to Brandon Heid, the firm's senior financial planning practice management consultant. Heid described the beta test to InvestmentNews at the Schwab IMPACT conference in Boston last week.

CoPlanner, a rules-based tool launched in March, aims to generate financial plans in seconds. Heid said it already looks at a client's fact set and determines which recommendations are pertinent to that client or profile, and that the chat feature will be layered on top as the interface to the rest of the platform. He offered examples: asking what real estate a client holds, or asking for help modeling a Roth conversion.

For advisors weighing eMoney before 2027, the due-diligence question is which parts of the platform the chat layer can reach. Heid described CoPlanner as the main driver, with the chat feature as the way advisors engage with everything else. Morningstar research cited by InvestmentNews found 80% of advisors use AI in some form, up from 67% last year, and 48% said AI had significantly or moderately improved their efficiency, up from 36%.

Brock Sutton of Capital Group told InvestmentNews that 83% of advisors use AI week to week, but only 13% use it for what he calls frontier capabilities, such as automating workflows. Sutton heads emerging client capabilities at the asset manager and spoke at the same conference.