One of the growing trends in the financial advisory industry is that advisors are talking (and for the most part, just that) about using estate planning to add value to current clients and create stronger connections with their families. (otherwise known as potential future customers).
In response, recent years have seen several technology companies (mostly founded by financial professionals) create products to ease the estate planning process for clients, advisors, or both.In a non-playable way, FP Alpha, Trucedent, VANILLAAND Wealth.com, to name a few. Despite some inevitable early hiccups, these products are almost ready for prime and advisory time they are finally taking notice.
Wealth planning platform Wealth.com's announcement today of its partnership and future integration with consumer fintech subscription company Facet and its 23,000 members managing over $3.11 billion in investments is the latest development in a year that it is seen that real estate technology begins to take its first baby steps in the light.
“The integration of technology into estate planning has revolutionized the field, breaking down longstanding barriers,” said Shruti Joshi, president and chief operating officer at Facet, in a statement. “With Wealth.com, we bridge the gap between awareness and action, empowering our members to protect their financial future with confidence.”
Facet's announcement follows Wealth.com's partnership (though not full integration) with $2.2 billion AUM firm Farther, announced in January.
In an interview with Wealthmanagement.com, Farther founder Taylor Matthews echoed a sentiment shared by some of Wealth.com's early adopters in praising the advisor-first nature and adaptability of the platform. “After surveying the market, Wealth.com stood out as a very advisor-centric solution for what our clients were looking for,” he said, “We aspire to be that family office – everything in one place, everything works – so the ability being very tailored and thoughtful was important.”
While Wealth.com wins converts by focusing solely on advisors, Steve Lockshin's Vanilla casts a wider net, with offerings for both professionals (advisor or not) and regular folks.
Vanilla, after unveiling its fully integrated wealth advisor platform in mid-2023, then announced its own partnership with Vanguard in January this year after a successful trial with a select few investors.
“Vanguard bet on us early on as a Series A investor, and they've long been on board with Steve's vision,” said Vanilla CEO Gene Farrell, “so we like to joke that this has been a success 2 1/2-year-old overnight.”
“Recognizing that some clients have complex estate planning needs that will span multiple generations, implementing Vanilla's capabilities supports our commitment to helping clients achieve stronger financial and legacy outcomes,” said Massy Williams, director and head of wealth management at Vanguard.
An advantage of Vanilla's broader perspective is that it also finds fans among estate planners. Accelerant is one of the nation's top technology firms in estate planning, and founder Dana Foley is involved with Vanilla, both as a consultant in its development and as an end user herself. For Foley, however, the added value of real estate technology like Vanilla is less about finding new services to offer its clients, but about allowing it to subtly change its relationship with them.
“The billable hour model hinders communication between clients and attorney advisors,” she said.
By shifting some of the labor-intensive design and data collection work that her team once did on a billable hourly basis to be handled more quickly by Vanilla for a flat fee, Foley not only finds more time to spent with clients, but also said her relationship with them is enhanced by not having to produce such intensively detailed billing of her time working for them.
“It makes the relationship less transactional,” she said.
In a non-playable way AND Trusts are among other prominent companies with products that target estate planners and back office functionality more directly.
And that's just the 10,000-foot view. Surprisingly, as you get more particles, more specified products emerge. Most of these are beyond the scope of this piece, but philanthropy—and DAF, in particular—is an evolving battleground.
Long one of the favorite tools of estate planners and high-net-worth advisors to ease clients into philanthropy, a pair of companies have emerged that seek to provide even greater access to these vehicles—Adam Nash's Daffy AND Charityvest.
Both aim to ease client access to DAF by providing access to pre-built investment packages (clients can still direct any charitable distribution of invested funds), all managed via the ubiquitous dashboard. Daffy mostly leaves his investment options at that, and Charityvest offers a few more stamps to flip to for advisers looking for something more customizable (albeit at a higher price).
“Where we're going is with advisors and giving the link to the macro trend of advisors as a commoditized service.” Charityvest founder Stephen Kump said: “Giving advice can play an important role as a differentiator for an adviser, allowing them to create value on a deeper and more personal level.”
It seems like that sentiment applies pretty well to the asset technology space as a whole.