The development, implementation and evaluation of an intelligent financial planning system.

Abstract

The need for personal financial planning has increased in the past few years because of deregulation of the financial industries. Expert system development has begun to emerge as a tool for many industries to increase their access and manipulation of information and data. This research looks at the domains of personal financial planning and expert systems technology by combining them with the systems development methodology. The qualitative and quantitative sides of financial planning have not been previously combined in an expert system for financial planning. Experts from the five main areas of financial planning and one hundred and ninety-one financial planning companies were included in the study. The expert system developed was evaluated in a 2 by 2 factorial design with the presence of the expert system on one axis and the presence of the expert planner during the process on the other axis. Eighty-five of the companies had the system installed at their site for two months of everyday use on the job and measurements were taken during the last two weeks. Fifteen hundred and sixty-seven plans were developed and analyzed. Data was collected from the files and the plans generated by the expert system or by the existing system. It was also collected from questionnaires filled out by both the planners and the clients before and after their use of one of the systems. The data were analyzed with respect to twenty-one hypotheses using statistical analysis, primarily ANOVA. The results indicate that the expert system can significantly increase the information processing capacity of financial planning companies. The process used for financial planning by the expert system was more comprehensive than existing systems which tend to focus on only one area of financial planning. The organizational structure was changed as a result of introducing the expert system into the financial planning process as witnessed by the increase of expertise for both the expert planners and the non-expert clerks.