Overview
Imago Advisor Tools and Imago Outer Office are a set of tools design to provide support for the advice process of complex multi asset investment and benefit scenarios including drawdown.

Many of the Advisor Tools are built upon the core calculation engine that is built into Imago Illustrations and Imago Reviews. This means that any regulatory or legislative changes effecting the calculation engine automatically get updated to the users of the Imago products that use the common engine.


 


Tools used to provide advice at the accumulation stage. These are the Imago Outer Office tools.


Tools used at the at retirement stage. These are the Imago Advisor Tools.

Imago Outer Office was developed to provide a configurable platform that helps financial advisers provide advice, based around risk profiling and asset allocation, in support of the new model adviser. Furthermore it was developed to enrich the product and fund selection capabilities of the Imago Front Office toolsets, that provide illustrations and reviews.

To view some sample screen shots download the PDF file

Features
Annuities calculator
 Imago now exposes more of its underlying technologies to the user, enabling firms to easily calculate future annuity rates using the latest FSA mortality basis.

Contributions levels calculator
 Whether you're trying to ensure that your contribution levels remain below your lifetime allowance, looking to build up a fund of a certain amount, or trying to determine how much you will have to contribute in order to receive a certain level of income when you retire, Imago can figure it all out with just a couple of clicks of the mouse.

Physical contributions can be inputted either as a percentage of salary or as a specific amount, together with employer’s contribution. It is also possible to set the level of risk as low, medium, high or customise it to select a portfolio from a list of investments.

Other parameters can be inputted including projections for annuity values and interest rate growth based on changing market conditions. Tax relief on contributions can also be applied. The component also ensures that minimum contributions based on income level have been met or exceeded.

It offers the flexibility to cope with monthly, quarterly as well as annual contributions and escalating contributions as desired. Ultimately it calculates required contribution based on delivering a specific income through an annuity or draw-down of tax free cash lump sums.

Drawdown income level calculator
 Quickly check that any change in a clients income requirements still remain within the limits set down by the Revenue - including support for both the current and post A-day regulatory rules.

Lifetime allowance calculator
With the advent of a 'Lifetime allowance', Imago now offers the ability to quickly calculate where your funds may be at a certain date, taking into account your specific contribution decisions and compare it against the projected lifetime allowance.

Projections analysis
Hand in hand with our contribution levels calculator is the Imago projections analysis tool. Analyse your illustrations at the click of a button, view information on charges, income, fund growth, effect-of-deductions, lifetime allowance and more. Plus you can now 'tweak' your illustration basis to instantly see the effect it will have on your pension arrangement - see how taking a smaller income, retiring later or deferring
going into drawdown will affect your fund.

Tax free cash analysis
Examine the relative merits of full versus phased drawdown, including the supportable levels of income and the relative tax-efficiency of each income vehicle.
 

Technology

Architecture - High level of architecture independence. Component based design (allows integration into internal / external systems - use your annuity calculator with your own systems, or plug it into Imago Illustrations and generate tailored annuity rates for increased realism in immediate values / critical yield reporting)
Integrates with legacy database systems

Business services - Imago implements its calculation engine as a separate component from the user interface to enable distributed processing or the ability to utilise the underlying calculation technologies separately (e.g. back-office systems integration).
The Imago Business Services layer has been implemented as a C# based ASP.NET Web Service, using XML based SOAP messages over HTTP to execute all illustration, annuity, projection, lookup, and analysis functions.

Communications - By default, the client web browser uses conventional HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) messages to request and receive pages from the Imago server. Alternatively, these communications could be encrypted and transmitted using a secure (HTTPS) protocol to increase privacy.

Database - SQL Server 2003 by default. Imago has been implemented on a number of other database platforms as well, from non persistent environments, through to text files all the way to Oracle.

Inputs - Users can access Imago using a browser. Imago can also be implemented without a Dunstan Thomas UI via portable, XML driven inputs.

Minimum server requirements:
 Hardware
Pentium 4 processor running at 2 GHz or faster
512 MB of RAM or more
At least 10 GB available disc space
(highly recommended) data backup facilities

Software
Microsoft® Windows 2000 Server Service Pack 4 or
Microsoft® Windows Server 2003
Microsoft® SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 4
Microsoft® .NET Framework 1.1

Outputs - PDF report generation.

Presentation layer - The Imago user interface has been constructed as a Microsoft® ASP.NET Web Application consisting of a series of ASP.NET Web Forms and server-side C# program code.

Security - Imago employs Microsoft ASP.NET Forms based user authentication to ensure that only genuine recognised users are able to access the Imago system. Imago stores all user credentials in its database. These credentials must be authenticated before ASP.NET will allow access to any Imago functions. Once a user has been authenticated, ASP.NET will allow client page requests to be processed. From this point on, which pages a user can access is managed by the Imago application. The application functionality (e.g. access to illustration analysis functions) is determined by the properties of the installed Imago licence key. The permissions to access / update specific data are determined by a users attributes as read from the Imago database.