The revamp will make Engage easier to use, he said, and more attractive to larger firms with restricted investment portfolios.

It will happen in Defaqto’s “next big push,” he said in an exclusive interview with Financial Planning Today Magazine, the sister publication of Financial Planning Today website.

Mr Milliken said that Defaqto has no plans to add other elements to Engage, such as its own platform or DFM.

He said: “We want to help advisers to operate as efficiently as possible, increase assets under advisement and comply with the regulatory framework. We believe that Financial Planners are best served by our tools providing independent data and expert analysis to enable them to work to the best of their ability. This principle might be compromised if we stepped into the platform or DFM markets.”

In recent updates to the software, Defaqto has added Consumer Duty profiles to Engage. The profiles enable Financial Planners to compare individual products against key Consumer Duty criteria.

Defaqto estimates that around 30% of UK Financial Planners have use Engage. The Financial Planner software has supported over £42bn of recommendations in the past 12 months, he said.

Before joining Defaqto in March 2021, John Milliken led several growth technology and data businesses, including time as a member of the founding team at an organisation that achieved a public market valuation of £1.5bn through pioneering the use of mobile phones as a consumer banking channel.

Mr Milliken was interviewed by Financial Planning Today editor Kevin O'Donnell for the latest edition of Financial Planning Today Magazine.

You can read the full interview with Mr Milliken in the latest issue of the magazine. Subscribe to Financial Planning Today magazine to read the full interview and receive alerts when the latest issues are published.

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