Financial advisors – even those with high net worth clients – who ignore the fast-growing personal financial management industry do so at their own peril, according to Neal Ringquist, president of Advisor Software.

“Advisors will want to embrace this to continue to engage customers,” Ringquist said, addressing the Tiburon CEO Conference in New York.

Ringquist cited budgeting, goal planning and planning and execution as the most popular industry segments, spawning rapidly expanding companies such as mint.com; goalgami and gosimplifi.com.

Over the next ten years, growth in personal financial management will be spurred by mobile devices such as smart phones, he said.

“Over 10 billion mobile units will be sold in the next ten years,” Ringquist said, “and PFM applications will be on them.”

In addition to being available on multimedia devices, Ringquist said, the popularity of personal finance management products was being driven by easy access to information and advice, anonymous interaction, a sense of community and a feeling that progress was being made toward meeting goals.

To date, PFM products have not presented a threat as an asset gatherer, Ringquist said.

But he cautioned that advisors need to pay attention.

“They need to look at the products and applications and learn about them,” he said. “They need to find out what is engaging the client and apply it to their own business.”