The Living Balance Sheet®

Making The Living Balance Sheet even better for our clients and advisors

The Living Balance Sheet (LBS) is core to our philosophy and belief system — it’s part of what sets Guardian and our financial professionals apart in the industry. It’s how we approach working with clients to protect and grow their wealth. With its ability to help clients truly understand where they stand financially, and its strong impact on Field productivity, it has become a crucial and beloved tool over its 19-year history. How beloved? Almost 68% of our financial professionals use it — and we had over 600 attendees at the 2024 LBS Forum.

We’re committed to keeping LBS current by evolving with the ever-changing needs of clients and keeping pace with continually modernizing digital and technical capabilities. In 2024, we reached a significant milestone in this journey when we completed the major upgrade to LBS we launched four years ago and fully replaced our legacy platform.

What we delivered

We delivered three brand new, fully redesigned and rebuilt platforms, with the goal of improving the experience for you and your clients:

Financial professionals have a new planning platform. Rebuilt from the ground up with a modernized design, brand new code, and expansion of both client-facing tools and practice management features, this new planning platform has been designed to help you effectively engage and serve your growing client base.
Clients have a new mobile app, giving them 24/7 access to LBS in the palm of their hand. Now, they can view a simplified dashboard, seamlessly connect their accounts, track their wealth-building activities, and easily access their important documents stored in the vault.
Clients also have a new desktop site, featuring a modernized take on the original client website that makes everything quicker to reach from the landing page. It expands upon what clients can do on their app, with additional capabilities to track spending across all connected accounts.

Launching new technology for your planning practice and for your clients to engage in is, in itself, an accomplishment. In addition, each of these platforms was enhanced to include many new valuable features:

A book of business dashboard provides you with a holistic view of your business and insights into additional opportunities to work with your clients
The business mode offers a more targeted way to work with your business clients and reflects the expertise of the Business Resource Center
Cash flow tools offer new ways to promote and track wealth building over time
A more engaging client experience keep clients connected and on task in the planning process

“In 2025, we will be celebrating 20 years of LBS. It seems only fitting that we’re marking this milestone with a refresh, having fully rebuilt all three LBS properties in less than five years, with 29 consecutive on-time releases,” Meg Vecchi, Head of Practice Development, Individual Markets, explains. “Each of these releases presented an opportunity to layer in additional versatility and features, while staying rooted in the rich planning philosophy that is foundational to LBS. This collective effort and our exceptional results truly epitomize what we can accomplish when we lean into our powerful Home Office and field partnerships, delivering meaningful work to advance the financial well-being of your clients.”

Partnerships made it happen

Thanks to all of you who were deeply involved in development and testing, from emailed suggestions to our field committees. Your input at each phase generated over 550 Field suggestions, many of which were incorporated (or will be in the future) into the new system. Your input has been crucial throughout the 20-year history of LBS — and is why LBS is so effective for you and your clients.

“LBS has enjoyed 20 years of uninterrupted effectiveness because of our unique field/Home Office hybrid approach,” says Neal Brincefield, Financial Advisor at Consolidated Planning, and a Special Consultant to LBS. “As a field consultant helping to lead the charge on how we apply system design, messaging, and planning, I am just one field voice among dozens who regularly weigh in and shape our proprietary tool. It’s this feedback loop that has ensured our system has remained sharp, relevant, and effective for the last two decades.”

What’s next – continued innovation aligned with your business needs

One of the great advantages of sunsetting the older version of LBS is that the development team is now focused exclusively on one platform for financial professionals — and two for our clients.

The focus going forward is on developing solutions and improvements that align with what you as business owners want to accomplish: increasing revenue, reducing expenses, and creating ease and scalability for you to serve more clients, while staying relevant with existing clients. In 2025, you can expect to see changes like new estate room tools, non-qualified deferred comp tools, improved client site functionality, and more.

“We’ll continue to focus on the Field partnership model we’ve built,” says Caitlin Pemble, Head of LBS. “That means consistent outreach to users so we can understand how LBS can best support you and your clients — as well as training and coaching to help our users leverage LBS effectively.” As part of this, the LBS team will continue to offer a full program of high-quality training events in 2025, including its signature LBS Forum Week in March.

“From my perspective as a financial professional, LBS is a Swiss army knife of versatile financial tools and data, enabling me to explain both simple and complex topics in a clear, easy-to-understand manner. It provides a seamless way to guide clients toward informed decisions and action.”
Ashvin Chheda
Opes One
“All the tools in LBS help me communicate complex strategies in a simple way. This both informs clients and helps them take action to implement our solutions. My clients particularly love the new app for their phones, as it makes it simple to securely scan and upload documents to the vault. They can easily see their goals and review their cash flow plans from the main dashboard. Plus, my team loves the task function!”
Nicole Pilo
Consolidated Planning

The Living Balance Sheet®

What we delivered

Partnerships made it happen

What’s next – continued innovation aligned with your business needs

“From my perspective as a financial professional, LBS is a Swiss army knife of versatile financial tools and data, enabling me to explain both simple and complex topics in a clear, easy-to-understand manner. It provides a seamless way to guide clients toward informed decisions and action.”

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What we delivered

Partnerships made it happen

What’s next – continued innovation aligned with your business needs