With an aging population and the ongoing great wealth transfer by baby boomers, now is surely the time to tackle estate planning.
Clients may procrastinate, but financial advisors should view this important task through a positive lens.
"If advisors don't do estate planning, they're leaving a lot on the table. Help with estate plans [is] … part of wealth management," Rafael Loureiro, CEO and co-founder of the tech-led estate planning platform Wealth.com, argues in an interview with ThinkAdvisor. "You provide the information; we provide the intelligence."
That's a succinct way of framing just how Wealth.com helps financial advisors. The platform uses advanced technology — including artificial intelligence — to make estate planning easier, faster and up to date.
The process, paperless since the docs reside online, connects all the client's assets — from bank accounts to baseball card collections. Each advisor is paired with a dedicated "partner success manager."
Wealth.com, which has an in-house legal team as well as partner attorneys to provide input, is connected to 40,000 financial institutions. In the interview, Loureiro explains why that's one of its key advantages.
Before co-founding Wealth.com, which went live in 2022, Loureiro, a native of France who was raised in Brazil, was chief technology officer at Emailage and group manager at Avanade. In total, he has 20-plus years of tech leadership experience.
In the recent phone interview with Loureiro, who was in Phoenix, where Wealth.com is based, he explains how the firm's online process deepens client-advisor relationships and reveals the prime function of the platform's AI "legal assistant," dubbed "Extraction Esther."
Here are highlights of our conversation:
THINKADVISOR: What sets your service apart?
RAFAEL LOUREIRO: The traditional way of doing estate planning documents is so old school: with pen and paper.
We created a solution that makes the process easier and dynamic.
Our technology connects all your assets instantly. But it's not one-and-done. It's always kept up to date.
Most people avoid estate planning, partly because they need to consult a lawyer to prepare the documents. Right?
You got it! Ours is a web-based service that we can provide to the client [through advisors] in the comfort of their home.
The information is shared with the advisor so they can be part of the conversation without making decisions in the estate plan on the client's behalf.
They're made by the client, not the advisor.
Do you ever work directly with the end client?
No. We aren't direct-to-consumer. That's the difference between us and other solutions.
And the client doesn't have to go to a lawyer [to do the documents]. It's all done online. The documents you get at the end of the process are the same high-quality ones you'd get from a lawyer.
[However], at the end of the process, you still need to [visit] a lawyer.
What do advisors like best about your service?
One of the chief benefits is that you can set up all client assets on Wealth.com: bank accounts, property, jewelry, a baseball card collection, crypto.
The advisors can see everything, including, for instance, the fact that you want to leave a legacy to your stepson.
This deepens the relationship, and it's one of the things advisors like most.
How else does your process help financial advisors?
It lets them provide more [services] to their clients. Help with estate plans, along with tax planning [and so forth], are all part of wealth management.
If advisors don't do estate planning, they're leaving a lot on the table.
