FreeWill, a social good enterprise connecting philanthropy and estate planning, today announced the launch of Estately, a software solution that allows financial advisors to offer comprehensive estate planning as a component of their comprehensive wealth management practices, enabling them to manage every step of the process centrally.
Estately leverages FreeWill's customer-facing technology and scale to serve the full spectrum of financial advisors. It claims to be the first product to combine self-drafted and lawyer-drafted digital documents into a unified platform.
Mercer Advisors collaborated on the design for 18 months as the anchor client and is completing a full rollout; Over 60 firms have since been added during the beta period.
“As we've grown FreeWill from an idea into the most popular online estate planning platform in the country, we continue to receive constant input from financial advisors who love our platform and want to use it with their clients,” co- CEO of FreeWill Jenny. Xia Spradling said. “We began to realize that existing estate planning solutions did not provide a one-size-fits-all planning experience for all clients. We took the leap to develop attorney drafting software in order to ensure a scalable and consistent experience between attorneys and clients. We married it with our best-selling self-directed drafting technology to create the first truly integrated estate planning drafting platform.”
Spradling believes that estate planning has, for too long, been an arduous process for financial advisors and clients. Integrating these experiences is key to ensuring continued client involvement in the plan.
Mercer Advisors president Daniel Gourvitch agrees.
“Mercer was founded 40 years ago by an estate and tax planning attorney, so what's most important to us is getting the job done. We want to maximize the client's pursuit of the estate plan,” he said.
When asked why he chose to work with Estately specifically, especially since they already offer in-house estate planning options, Gourvitch explained that the company was looking for a way to make its people more productive, especially in the ability theirs to skew client up and down wealth levels (Mercer's existing estate planning offerings were skewed toward high-net-worth clients). Estately's technology offered Mercer the ability to scale, and FreeWill's success story reassured Mercer that, as Gourvitch puts it, “We weren't experimenting with our customers.”
The process of using Estately is quite simple. Advisors direct their clients to the platform either through their own branded website or by sending a personalized invitation link. Once on the platform, the client can choose whether they would prefer a self-directed or lawyer-led process.
The self-directed approach is very similar to FreeWill's already existing product. The client decides which documents they would like, such as wills, revocable living trusts, financial powers of attorney or advanced health care directives (there is also a quiz that can help clients understand what documents they are looking for) . They then complete a guided questionnaire to complete those documents, which are then generated with all signature pages, schedules and other add-ons, ready for execution.
For clients seeking more help from an attorney, Estately partners with a firm that offers a network of estate planning attorneys in all 50 states and the District of Columbia who can provide a full breadth of options, from simply walking around clients through a fairly simple plan to design and execute something much more complex for someone with a higher net worth. Clients sign engagement letters with these attorneys, creating a traditional attorney/client relationship, including all the duties that entails.
Regardless of the option chosen, the work is still entered into the Estately system, which contains the document drafting software for use by the associated solicitors. The advisor is kept involved and informed through their personal dashboard, where they can track plan progress, download client document packs and view a simple visual plan summary, which can also be used as a client handout.
Accidentally violating a law's anti-malpractice rules is a concern for many advisors that prevents them from adding estate planning to their practices. According to Spradling, Estately tries to mitigate this concern by putting what it calls “guardrails” on the platform.
“Effectively, the platform makes it very easy for advisors to assist with activities they are legally allowed to assist with, but almost impossible to engage in aspects they should not. she said. For example, Estately has many CRM integrations, as you would expect from such a platform, and advisors can easily interact with the information on it. However, all decision-making processes are at the discretion of the customer.
In terms of pricing, Estatelty charges firms a fixed annual subscription fee based on the total number of advisors. This subscription provides unlimited access to all Estately tools and the full network of lawyers. However, if the client decides to go the solicitor-led route, this will create a separate relationship, so solicitor's fees are not included in the flat fee (although there is nothing stopping the adviser from working out any number of specific payment arrangements with for the lawyer to avoid or pay the client's costs).