A standalone simulator answers one specific question: what's the tax on this capital gain, what's the payoff on that retirement plan. A full wealth planning tool goes further: it compares several strategies against each other.
The trap of the standalone simulator
Retirement plans, wealth tax, estate transmission, capital gains, retirement, real estate, corporate holding structures, business transfer schemes: each mechanism often has its own simulator, sometimes built by a different vendor. The advisor ends up running several tools for a single client question, then manually cross-checking the results.
The criteria that matter
Regulatory updates. Income tax brackets, wealth tax thresholds, and retirement plan caps need to track current law without any lag.
The ability to compare several strategies on the same assumptions.
Connection to data already collected on the client.
How readable the output is for the client.
Comparing the solutions
Solution | What sets it apart | Multi-strategy comparison | Apana's take ★ | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Apana (Advisor) | Simulators pre-filled from the wealth assessment already built by Copilot | Native, within the same client file | ★★★★☆ | The richness of the comparison depends on the quality of the upstream wealth assessment |
FVI | Long-established vendor since 1991, specialist in wealth analysis and simulation software (UpSys) | Rich simulator suite, to be cross-checked internally | ★★★★☆ | Less natively connected to real-time aggregation or a CRM |
Wealthcome | WealthLab module dedicated to business simulators, within a modular suite | Good, across the suite's modules | ★★★★☆ | Founded in 2022, the simulator module is recent |
Harvest (Big Expert) | Long-standing wealth simulators, proven over time | Exists, less connected to real-time AI | ★★★☆☆ | Suffered a data breach in 2025 |
We can't test or gather direct feedback on every solution on the market. The views shared in this table reflect our own usage as well as feedback we've gathered from prospects and clients.
How to choose based on your situation
If you want to compare several strategies on data already collected for a client, Advisor avoids the re-entry that standalone simulator libraries require.
If you're looking for the historical specialist in wealth simulation, FVI, active since 1991, is a reference worth evaluating.
If you want simulators within a broader modular suite, Wealthcome (WealthLab module) is worth considering.
If historical robustness of the simulators comes first, Harvest remains an established reference.
FAQ
Is a free online simulator enough for a wealth advisor? For a quick estimate, yes. For a client-facing recommendation, regulatory freshness and traceability of the assumptions become more important criteria.
How do you check that a simulator is up to date with current law? Ask the vendor for the last update date of the tax brackets and thresholds used.
Can you compare a retirement plan and life insurance on the same assumptions with a standard simulator? Rarely natively: a standalone, mechanism-specific simulator usually doesn't allow it.
Want to see Advisor compare several strategies on the same file?