CMPAS FEATURES

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The Challenge

Since its creation in the early 2000s, goals based financial planning software has become a must-have in the toolkit of a financial advisor.

There are several options on the market, but all too often financial plans are annual events instead of a living part of the investment process.

Existing tools suggest a single asset allocation strategy as the solution for a client's complex life goals. And connecting a client's plan to their portfolio in a dynamic, unified process takes a tremendous amount of time and effort on the part of the advisor.
THE OLD WAY:
  • Single allocation strategy that rarely align with your client's complex goals
  • Minimum plan automation & lack of specific strategy guidance
  • Time consuming, manual process to connect the plan to the portfolio

The Solution

CMPAS takes advantage of the full range of your firm's asset allocation models and assembles these existing portfolio strategies into solutions customized for the specific goals of each client.

Account specific calculations of these strategies creates a set roadmap for strategy implementation and provides the potential for improved tax benefits. This roadmap is automatically updated and the advisor notified.

The CMPAS combination of customization and automation greatly simplifies the unified planning and portfolio management process.
THE NEW WAY:
  • Assemble your existing portfolio strategies into customized solutions for each client.
  • Receive notifications in the software when action is needed
  • Automatically fund goals with appropriate tax deferred accounts to save your client money. Ex. 529 funds college goal
CMPAS Packages

It's Time For An Upgrade

CMPAS: Portfolio

Understand the ins and outs of your client’s existing net worth portfolio while also exploring underutilized asset classes through automated portfolio optimizations.

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CMPAS: Planning

Provide your client's with a truly unique financial plan, where each goal is given its own customized investment strategy using your existing portfolio solutions.

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CMPAS: Integration

The ultimate package for the financial professional who desires automation, precision and control over every aspect of their firm's asset allocation and financial planning process.

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Caravel Concepts

Planning software built by investment professionals

CMPAS, a revolutionary financial planning and asset allocation tool offering each of your clients a truly customized planning experience with an asset allocation strategy optimized for their specific life goals.

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Meet our founder,
Michael Jones

CMPAS is the brain child of financial industry leader, Michael Jones.  A frequent guest on CNBC, Bloomberg, and Yahoo Finance, Michael's career in financial planning began in the early 2000s while he was working as the CIO of Wells Fargo Advisors' predecessor firm. Michael provided the mathematical assumptions and asset allocation modeling behind the industry's first goals-based financial planning software, the Envision System. The Envision programming team subsequently formed the heart of MoneyGuidePro.

Some 20 years laters, after co-founding RiverFront Investment Group and helping it grow to more than $8B, Michael wanted to take his experience in building top tier financial tools and create a software that could help the everyday advisor not only create unique portfolio strategies, but also connect those strategies to their client's financial plan.

Customization

CMPAS software calculates a unique portfolio strategy optimized for each client's specific life goals and risk tolerance. Through the CMPAS “mass customization” process, each client account (IRA, 529, taxable, etc.) has an investment strategy tailored for the specific goals that account will fund. CMPAS technology allows advisors to scale this customized advice across even the largest advisory practices.

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Computer screen showing CMPAS's screen portfolio modular breakdown  of all client's accounts. This is one of the most innovative features of CMPAS.

Control

Caravel believes that the key capital market assumptions (CMAs) that determine plan results should be controlled by the advisory firm, not the software provider. With CMPAS, advisory firms can choose between industry standard Static (“random walk”) assumptions and Price-Driven CMAs that vary expected returns based on valuation levels, or have Caravel encode their proprietary CMA process. 

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Blue and orange graph shows the ups and downs of the market.

Choice

Advisors should not be limited by their planning software to only the most popular asset classes. CMPAS asset allocation and planning tools support virtually every asset class represented by an S&P Dow Jones market index, and we provide custom modeling services for asset classes outside the S&P universe.

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Practical

CMPAS assembles customized portfolio solutions from an advisor’s existing portfolio strategies, minimizing turnover and keeping their existing investment strategy and process in place. Capital gains optimization ensures that the benefits of recommended portfolio changes outweigh the tax consequences.

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Protection

CMPAS allows clients to prioritize their most important life goals, providing those goals added protection from another Great Depression or 2008 Financial Crisis. This protection is enhanced by an automatic derisking process that alerts advisors when goals are approaching and portfolio risk needs to come down.

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CMPAS FEATURES

It's Time for an Upgrade

CMPAS features in a hexagon shape.
Hexagon shape with wrench and screw driver in it. This is to illustrate how CMPAS is customizable for each client.

Customization

Our “mass customization” technology calculates a unique portfolio strategy optimized for each client’s specific goals and risk tolerance, allowing advisors to scale customized advice across even the largest advisory practices.
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A hexagon shape with a hand controlling some sliding buttons. This illustrates how CMPAS gives the user control over their CMA's and provides asset classes informed by S&P Dow Jones data.

Control

You control the key capital market assumptions (CMAs) that determine plan results. Choose between Static or Price-Driven CMAs or have Caravel encode your proprietary CMA process.
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Hexagon shape with a robot in the center. This illustrates how CMPAS has automated features to make the user's job of financial advising much easier.

Automation

CMPAS automatically assigns goals to specific accounts based upon potential tax benefits, and optimizes an investment strategy for those assigned goals. CMPAS automation helps solve regulatory "asset location" requirements, and provides alerts if the client's tax strategy could be improved.
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A hexagon shape with a lock inside it. This illustrates how CMPAS protects you clients goals by independently funding each one and allowing you and your client to decide how bullet proof you want your goals, and

Protection

Prioritize your clients’ most important life goals by adding extra protection from market turmoil. CMPAS devotes specific assets toward each goal, so this added protection is unaffected when money is spent on lower priority goals.
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A hexagon shape with a clock and dollar sign. This illustrates how CMPAS saves you time and money by incorporating your existing portfolio strategies as well as saving your client money on capital gains taxes.

Efficiency

Leverage your existing portfolio strategies and processes with CMPAS’s cutting edge portfolio analytics. Provide clients added insights into the risk/reward profile of your strategies, and use our optimization features to enhance those strategies.
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Financial advisors speaking with a young black couple about their financial plan.
The Caravel 3p Process

Charting Your Financial Course

At Caravel we support planning based advisors and the disciplined and structured investment processes they use to ensure clients achieve their goals. CMPAS helps you automate that process with an accessible structure called the Caravel 3 Ps. The three key steps—Planning, Portfolio Construction, and Progress Monitoring—are integrated seamlessly into the CMPAS software, allowing for an automated process that lets advisors work smarter and do even more for their clients. ‍
In the planning step, the financial advisor and client work together to identify and prioritize goals, defining dreams as specific dollars and dates. This NEED-WANT-DREAM framework may sound familiar, but our system differentiates itself by building in varied levels of independent protection for each of these goals. The likelihood of achieving higher priority goals is not impacted by fulfilling lower priority goals.

For example, if our software confirms that the client can buy their DREAM exotic sports car, purchasing that car will not impact the odds of achieving future higher priority goals like a secure retirement. CMPAS achieves this level of protection by placing each goal into its own portfolio module based on the goal’s horizon timeframe. Our competitors lump all goals into one module that does not allow for differentiation or individualized protection. 
Once goals are defined and prioritized, our software calculates a unique portfolio strategy customized for each client’s life plan. Before Caravel, managing customized portfolios across a large number of clients would present an overwhelming challenge. But through the “mass customization” process, clients get the benefit of customized investment plans while advisors get the portfolio management advantages of a small number of portfolio models/modules (typically 5 or 6). Essentially, our product adds automation and rigorous risk management to the risk bucketing approach many advisors now employ.

Our software creates customized solutions from a small set of portfolio modules by first quantifying the time horizon and risk characteristics (NEED, WANT, or DREAM) for each goal in the plan. These mathematical characteristics are matched against a predefined set of modular building block portfolios with offsetting risks. 

Shorter term goals are aligned with shorter time horizon modules. These modules tend to have large allocations to cash and/or bonds. Longer term goals are funded through longer term modules, with higher equity weightings and therefore higher potential return. Our asset/liability management process provides mathematically rigorous planning solutions, but client needs are not driven exclusively by math. We recognize that evaluating and incorporating risk tolerance is a very individual and emotional component of setting an appropriate portfolio strategy. 

Caravel provides risk profiling tools to help advisors understand the elements of risk management that cannot be quantified by a computer model. This allows advisors to dynamically adjust proposed portfolio risk, allowing clients to see and understand the impact of more conservative or more aggressive strategies on overall plan results. Clients can then determine the portfolio risk level that strikes the right balance between their long term goals and their short term peace of mind.
Watching the markets daily can be stressful to both advisors and their clients. Caravel provides reassurance through volatile markets with our third step—Progress Monitoring. This online mapping tool graphically illustrates progress and provides an accurate picture of how the odds of achieving each goal change as markets fluctuate. Since NEEDS and WANTS are designed to be protected against severe market environments, clients can see how market moves tend to have very little impact on these critical goals. DREAMS—the goals clients have determined are less vital to their life plan—are often the only portion of the plan affected by market volatility. Should market returns exceed the conservative assumptions used in calculating the life plan, an opportunity may arise to “lock in” a goal and de-risk a plan. Locking in a goal consists of moving portfolio assets out of riskier, higher returning assets and into low risk, low return short maturity bonds and cash.
A young woman financial advisor speaking to a young white couple and shaking hands.
Overview of CMPAS

CMPAS gives you the flexibility and control to offer better portfolio solutions

In addition to its groundbreaking planning tools, CMPAS also includes a transformative portfolio construction process that builds asset allocation solutions around intuitive risk characteristics (risk means losing money). The CMPAS portfolio construction tools, like our planning process, offer complete transparency and control over the underlying capital market assumptions (CMAs). CMPAS provides pre-calculated CMAs using industry standard Static models, while also offering the first ever asset allocation and planning tool using dynamic Price-Driven CMA models. As a third alternative for users with an established CMA process, Caravel can encode that CMA process into the CMPAS system. 

Portfolio decision makers can utilize their existing portfolio strategies, or use CMPAS optimization features to enhance their existing strategies through the broad array of asset classes that CMPAS makes available. In either case, CMPAS calculates the specific risk characteristics that define those portfolios. CMPAS matches the risk characteristics of each client’s life goals with a portfolio module having a comparable risk profile.  This asset/liability matching process allows CMPAS to combine a small number of module portfolios into a nearly infinite number of customized investment strategies. 

Since each client’s goals are unique, CMPAS assembles a customized investment solution for each individual client. These customized solutions are built from a handful of standardized portfolio modules. This application of mass customization concepts to financial planning allows advisors to offer clients the best of both worlds. Clients receive the superior investment outcomes offered by portfolio strategies optimized for their specific life goals, while also receiving the superior risk management and portfolio oversight made possible by standardized portfolio models.

Please contact us to schedule a demo. 

Caravel vs. our competitors.
What makes us different

Caravel vs. Our Competitors

20 years ago, Michael was the Chief Investment Officer of the team that designed and built the Envision system for Wells Fargo. 

It was the first goals based planning system deployed  by a major investment firm and within 3 years over 500,000 clients received an Envision financial plan.

Although he is proud of the work he did 20 years ago, he was shocked when he realized how little the technology has changed since then. It is like if a car manufacturer had spent the last 20 years designing better cupholders and adding Corinthian leather seats but ignored the engine, transmission, and tires. The basic engine underneath all the major planning tools is exactly the same. Michael figured it was time for an upgrade. 

Between our asset allocation product CMPAS and financial planning tool MAPS, we provide numerous features that truly make a difference for your firm’s portfolio modeling and client plans.

Board room with people in it.
Why Work with us

The Caravel Advantage

Your Investment Philosophy Become Your Software

All capital market assumptions (those key assumptions about potential risk and return) are driven by your investment firm’s philosophy and are applied consistently across the Caravel Concepts Software suite (CMPAS and MAPS). Whether you believe market returns are random, driven by specific risk factors, or a function of starting valuation levels, our software allows you to build portfolio solutions based upon your core beliefs and investment philosophy. You choose the analytical framework and we do the rest, or you can upload your specific assumptions about asset class risk and return.
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Design Customized Portfolio Modules

Our software uses your selected Capital Market Assumptions (CMA) framework to craft portfolio solutions optimized to make money at different time frames even in severe market downturns (Great Depression, 2008, etc.). You select portfolio modules for each investment time frame (3-year, 7-year, etc.) that provide your targeted balance between risk and potential return, with risk defined both as risk of losing money and risk of underperforming market benchmarks. Alternatively, CMPAS will calculate an optimal investment time horizon for each of your existing portfolio solutions. Once an investment strategy is determined for various investment time frames, these portfolio modules provide the building blocks for customized investment strategies designed for each client’s unique financial plan. 
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Prioritise, Track & Modify Your Client's Goals

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We Make Doing The Right Thing The Easy Thing

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Research

Strategic & Market Insights

Our view on the economy and financial markets—updated weekly (Market Insights) and monthly (Strategic Insights) to help you chart a better course.
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The CMPAS Advantage

What makes us different?

A Custom Plan for Each Client Made Easy & Simple

CMPAS builds investment strategies customized to the specific life goals of each individual client. Mass customization technology builds on your existing investment process by transforming your existing allocation modules into portfolio building blocks.

These building blocks are combined into endless customized portfolio solutions matched to the needs of each client's specific financial goals and risk tolerance.

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Software That Does The Heavy Lifting For You

Advisors receive from CMPAS an account specific roadmap that simplifies the process of translating the financial plan into the client's actual portfolio. Client plans are  automatically updated over time and advisors notified if a modification in portfolio strategy is required.

For example, as a goal approaches its funding date, advisors are notified of the specific account that will fund the goal, and of the risk reduction and/or liquidity increase required in that account to keep the plan and the portfolio in alignment.

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Protect What Matters Most to Your Clients

CMPAS allows clients to prioritize their most important life goals. The higher the priority, the more financial assets are set aside exclusively for the protection of these high priority goals. This allows clients to express their required level of security for critical goals like retirement, while not over saving and sacrificing for dream goals that they would likely not pursue in a difficult market environment.

Dave Thomas
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Software That Reflects Your Firm's Philosophy

CMPAS is the only software on the market that provides unprecedented control over capital market assumptions for Monte Carlo simulation. We support complete transparency into the simulation results, and can provide any reporting requested or required for due diligence or potential regulatory requirements. We provide a comprehensive set of risk/reward & benchmark analytics for asset allocation strategies, as well as an optional set of optimization tools to help qualified portfolio manager advisors improve the risk/reward profile of their strategies.

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Build with Existing Portfolios & Optimize Your Tax Strategies

Leverage your existing portfolio strategies and processes with CMPAS’s cutting edge portfolio analytics. Provide clients added insights into the risk/reward profile of your strategies, and use our optimization features to enhance those strategies.

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