Transcript:
In this training, we’re going to review the Plan Settings section in the Voyant software.
To access your Plan Settings, start from the dashboard and scroll all the way down to the bottom left-hand side where it says Plan Settings. Open this section to review the assumptions and settings being applied to your case.
It’s important to review these settings either at the subscription level or on a case-by-case basis so that you understand exactly how the software is calculating the plan. If you need to make any adjustments, you can simply click into the editable fields, make your changes, and then click Done to save those settings for the plan.
Inflation and Growth
Under the Inflation and Growth section:
- Inflation affects the year-by-year inflation of expenses and goals within the plan.
- Investment Growth Rate is the default growth rate applied to any fixed-growth investments.
As you move through these settings, you’ll also notice hyperlinks throughout the software. These links provide detailed explanations of how each setting impacts different areas of the plan.
Default Ages
Next, let’s look at Default Ages.
The default mortality age is set at the subscription level and can be adjusted within Subscription Preferences, which I’ll show shortly.
For Child-Owned Accounts, any accounts owned by children in the plan will fall out of the plan at age 25 by default. If you’d like to extend this age for more generational planning—or shorten it—you can adjust that setting here.
Fees and Taxation
Under Fees and Taxation, you can enter your firm’s fees.
These can still be adjusted individually within specific investment products, but the values entered here will serve as the defaults whenever a new investment account is created.
A couple important distinctions:
- Product Fees are deducted directly from the growth of investment accounts.
- Ongoing Advice Fees appear as an actual expense in the plan and are fulfilled by the source account.
Asset Allocation
Next is Asset Allocation.
This section allows you to create a default portfolio mix that will automatically be applied to investment accounts using asset allocation growth.
Market Assumptions
Under Market Assumptions, you can review the assumptions being used in the plan.
These assumptions are mapped to portfolios and are especially important when running simulations such as a Monte Carlo analysis.
You can also learn more about customizing assumptions by clicking the links provided or by reaching out to the support team at:
If you want to change assumptions, click the Change button in the top-right corner and select from the available options.
Major Loss
The Major Loss settings are used for the Major Loss Insight or for special events on the Timeline where you want to model a significant financial loss event.
You can model losses anywhere from one to five years. Simply update the number of years to open additional fields.
You can also adjust the default age at which the major loss event occurs.
Liquidation Order
In retirement, the software follows a liquidation order to determine where withdrawals come from.
Voyant will first look for available cash or pensions, then continue through the liquidation order defined in this section.
If you’d like to customize the order in which accounts are liquidated, you can click and drag the account types up or down. You can also bring over additional account types from the left-hand side.
Savings Order
The Savings Order comes into play when a plan is running short on available cash and the software needs to prioritize contributions.
For example, if contributions are being made to both taxable and tax-free accounts, Voyant will prioritize the tax-free accounts first and taxable accounts last when income is limited.
Calculation Settings
Under Calculation Settings, there are two especially important options:
- Transfer All Excess Income and Credit to Savings
- Save Excess Income After Retirement
By default, surplus income in Voyant is assumed to be spent each year rather than saved.
If you would prefer the software to assume excess cash is saved:
- You can toggle on the option to save surplus income throughout the entire plan.
- Or you can choose to save surplus income only during retirement.
Subscription-Level Settings
If you are a subscription owner or manager, you can also configure these settings at the subscription level.
To do this, go to the Configuration screen. If you have the appropriate permissions, you’ll see a Subscription Preferences section containing the same settings we just reviewed.
Any settings saved there will automatically apply to plans created going forward.
I hope that was helpful. If you have any questions, you can always reach out through:
You can also click your client’s name in the top-right corner of the software, select Request Support, enter your message, and share client access with the support team.
Thanks for listening.