Whether it is managing client relationships, building financial plans, or analyzing portfolios, a good financial advisor software stack is great to have. However, what's unknown to most advisors is that even the most sophisticated financial advisor software platforms are incomplete. They're excellent at what they do but leave huge gaps in service delivery that clients increasingly anticipate being addressed. We’ll tackle why this is, but first, let’s review what’s available on the market for advisors.
Today's advisors typically rely on several categories of specialized software:
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems: Modern CRM platforms like Wealthbox, Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, and Redtail Technology serve as the central hub for client data, communications, and workflow management. These systems provide real-time portfolio integration, customizable financial reporting, goal tracking and management, and secure document handling.
Financial Planning Software: Leading platforms include eMoney Advisor and MoneyGuidePro, which offer cash flow analysis, retirement projections, and tax optimization. MoneyGuidePro holds about a third of the market share among financial advisor users and is known for its ability to generate "what-if" scenarios.
Portfolio Management Systems: Platforms like Orion Advisor Tech provide analytics, performance reporting, and risk assessment tools. Black Diamond is particularly known for its integration capabilities, connecting with over 70 third-party applications, custodians, and financial institutions.
Specialized Tools
Based on industry analysis, the best financial advisor software should include:
eMoney Advisor: As mentioned above, in addition to helping advisors create customized financial plans for clients, eMoney Advisor includes investment management tools and cash flow analysis to help clients understand income, expenses, and savings patterns. The platform's Decision Center feature helps uncover needs and potential pitfalls within client financial plans.
MoneyGuidePro: The platform aims to simplify gathering client data, analyzing their finances, and developing strategies to help them reach their goals. Its strength lies in scenario modeling and goal-based planning.
Orion Advisor Tech: Orion is a comprehensive all-in-one software that allows advisors to follow up with prospects through its CRM, onboard clients, create goals-based financial plans, select investment strategies, manage portfolios, execute trades, and maintain essential filings for compliance.
Black Diamond: Ideal for advisors managing complex, alternative investments with tools for portfolio construction, rebalancing, and performance reporting.
Wealthbox: CRM Designed specifically for financial advisors with specialized tools including data analytics, contact, task, portfolio, financial goal and pipeline management.
Addepar: An investment management and portfolio trading platform that provides tools for portfolio analysis, allowing you to assess and optimize performance, risk, and composition of investment portfolios.
Despite these impressive capabilities, even the most sophisticated financial advisor software platforms have a fundamental limitation: they're designed for efficiency within existing service boundaries, not for expanding your service offering.
Today's high-net-worth clients don't want multiple advisors for different needs. They want a single, trusted partner who can address their entire financial universe. This includes:
Here's the challenge: your financial advisor software can organize, analyze, and present information brilliantly within its domain. But what happens when a client needs:
Your software hits a wall. These opportunities either get referred out (losing control and potential revenue) or go unaddressed entirely.
This is where the concept of a Virtual Family Office (VFO) becomes game-changing for financial advisors. Think of it as the missing layer that makes your existing software complete.
A Virtual Family Office takes the same concept of a traditional family office—a team of professionals across multiple disciplines including tax planning, wealth management, legal services, business advisory, and risk mitigation—but operates in a virtual environment to deliver comprehensive advice for not only the extremely high net worth clients but also the mass affluent clients.
The concept originated from the Rockefeller family in 1882, who were frustrated with various professional specialists giving their family conflicting advice, so they decided to hire the best professionals full time to work together as a team.
When you connect to a Virtual Family Office, you're essentially adding five critical service dimensions:
The traditional referral model is lazy, dangerous, subpar for clients, and inefficient for professionals. It's just passing your client's problem onto someone else because you don't have the expertise to help, you lose control of the process, there's no holistic planning, and you're expected to juggle dozens of different relationships with experts.
The Team-Based Model, supported by a Virtual Family Office, changes this entirely. Instead of working in isolation, you become part of a Proactive Planning Team supported by a Virtual Family Office. The Proactive Planning Team is where the advisor and accountant work together directly with the client, while the Virtual Family Office provides the "special teams" for areas outside your expertise.
This approach uses what we call "T-Shaped" advisory, where you go "a mile wide and an inch deep" during initial client diagnostics to identify needs, then connect with specialists who go "a mile deep and an inch wide" in their area of expertise.
When you are supported by a Virtual Family Office, you can provide transformational benefits by looking through a "different and wider lens". Clients working with VFO-enabled advisors consistently report higher satisfaction because they're receiving truly comprehensive, proactive financial advice rather than fragmented services from multiple providers.
The financial advisory industry is at an inflection point. You have $30 TRILLION in wealth being transferred from Boomers to Millennials in the coming decade—the largest generational wealth transfer in history. You also have 109,093 financial advisors planning to retire in the next decade.
In this environment, the advisors who will thrive are those who can offer comprehensive solutions rather than narrow specializations. Your financial advisor software, no matter how sophisticated, is just the foundation. The VFO layer is what can really transform you.
That’s why the best financial advisor software for 2025 isn't just about having the right CRM, planning tools, or portfolio management systems—though these remain essential. It's about recognizing that even the most sophisticated traditional platforms are incomplete without access to a comprehensive team of specialists.
By having Virtual Family Office capabilities in addition to your existing technology stack, you transform from a traditional advisor using great software into a comprehensive wealth management solution. Your clients get the holistic service they increasingly demand, you capture revenue opportunities that would otherwise be lost, and you build a defensible competitive position in an increasingly crowded market.
The question isn't whether you need great financial advisor software—you absolutely do. The question is whether you'll settle for incomplete solutions or invest in the integrated approach that delivers true comprehensive planning.
Ready to see how a Virtual Family Office can complete your software stack?