Tag: Practice Growth

Archer Investment Management Creates Quick Wins for Clients

Archer Investment Management was founded in 2008 with a holistic approach to financial planning believing advisors should provide their clients help and guidance with all aspects of their finances, including estate planning. They have $270 million assets under management (AUM), working with over 200 households, mostly mid-career, high-income earners in tech with new or young families.

They needed a better digital solution to increase estate planning completion

Although the RIA had been founded in Austin, TX, they have since gone digital-first and work with clients across the country. While they had developed relationships with local, Austin-based estate attorneys, doing so in every state they had clients wasn’t scalable. But the digital estate planning solution they had originally brought on wasn’t working.

“Documents weren’t getting done,” Emily Rassam, Partner and Senior Financial Planner at Archer, said. “It’s almost worse if somebody went through the entire process of creating documents and they were unsigned. So we would have a lot of unsigned documents sitting in our portal.”

Wealth.com integrated easily into their holistic approach

“The big difference with wealth.com is for us to be able to be more involved with the invitation process and that we also developed some workflows, processes and checklists around nudging our clients through the process of creating their documents,” Rassam said.

They were impressed with more than just wealth.com’s platform, it was also the people behind the software.

“Our onboarding experience felt very white glove,” Rassam said. “They showed me how to create my own documents, so I can see what the client experience is like.”

“The other thing is wealth.com’s FAQs are really good,” she added. “Between Anne’s [Anne Rhodes, Chief Legal Officer at wealth.com] videos and then everything inside the platform as you moved through each screen, I feel like I didn’t need as much help.”

Wealth.com has become a relationship builder and is a big accomplishment for clients

“We helped exactly 35 clients start their estate planning documents with wealth.com in the 35 weeks we’ve been offering the service,” Rassam shared. “That’s 35 families who likely wouldn’t have created documents otherwise because finding an attorney and paying thousands of dollars is stressful.”

Her favorite quote from a client so far is:

“What we just did together in 20 minutes, took me 20 years to sit down and do.”

“When you think about the cost of wealth.com and the cost of us actually having to do the work versus getting this crossed off somebody’s list, it’s a huge relationship builder,” she said. “It gives our clients a lot of peace of mind. And this is exactly what we can help them do. It’s something we can very easily point to and say, ‘we accomplished this big thing.’”

“It’s a nice lever to mark down as being accomplished,” she added. “I’m not giving them legal advice in any way but we’re getting it done.”

“I love this complimentary value-add we get to provide our clients and their families,” she added.

 

 

 

How 9i Capital Group Uses Wealth.com to Make Estate Planning More Accessible

The Challenge: Overcoming Estate Planning Misconceptions

For years, Kevin Thompson has helped retirees navigate the complexities of financial planning. However, a common misconception among his clients was that estate planning was only for the ultra-wealthy or prohibitively expensive. Many retirees overlooked critical documents—such as medical directives, durable powers of attorney, and living wills—that could significantly impact their futures.

Estate planning at his prior firms was often cumbersome and inefficient, requiring extensive coordination with attorneys or, in some cases, being deprioritized altogether due to its complexity. Kevin knew there had to be a better way.

The Solution: Wealth.com’s Accessible and Scalable Estate Planning Platform

Kevin first discovered Wealth.com through word-of-mouth and was intrigued by its disruptive approach to estate planning. Unlike traditional estate planning solutions, Wealth.com provided:

  • A modern, digital-first approach to estate planning
  • A collaborative experience with advisors actively shaping the platform’s growth
  • A scalable way to provide essential estate planning services to all clients, not just those with HNW portfolios.

“I wanted to be part of an industry disruptor,” Kevin shared. “Wealth.com is moving fast, challenging the status quo, and helping advisors innovate within their practices.”

Implementation & Experience

Integrating Wealth.com into 9i Capital Group’s workflow was straightforward, as clients could complete the estate planning process at their own pace. Kevin notes, “The greatest value is the accessibility it offers—providing clients with estate planning support without the high costs typically associated with traditional partnerships.”

Key Benefits for Advisors & Clients

Wealth.com seamlessly integrates into an advisor’s workflow, ensuring that estate planning is no longer an afterthought but a fundamental part of comprehensive financial planning. By eliminating the barriers of cost and complexity, it empowers advisors to provide holistic, future-focused guidance to clients.

  • Affordable & Accessible: Clients can establish critical estate planning documents without high attorney fees.
  • Seamless Digital Experience: Clients can navigate the platform on their own timeline.
  • Advisors Stay in Control: Estate planning becomes an advisory-driven process, keeping advisors at the center of client conversations.

The Impact: Making Estate Planning an Essential Part of Financial Planning

Integrating Wealth.com into 9i Capital Group’s workflow was straightforward, as clients could complete the estate planning process at their own pace.

“The greatest value is the accessibility it offers—providing clients with estate planning support without the high costs typically associated with traditional partnerships.”

Looking Ahead: Estate Planning as a Must-Have for RIAs

Kevin believes Wealth.com is the future of estate planning for RIAs, aligning perfectly with the broader shift toward integrated and accessible financial services.

Estate planning is no longer a luxury reserved for the ultra-wealthy—it’s a critical component of holistic financial planning. With Wealth.com, advisors can seamlessly integrate estate planning into their practice, delivering greater value to clients while staying ahead in an evolving industry.

Kevin’s advice to other advisors: “Incorporate a fee structure within your engagement model. Wealth.com is a tool that can transform estate planning within your firm.”

 

 

Want to see how Wealth.com can elevate your practice? Schedule a demo today at wealth.com/demo.

A special thanks to Kevin Thompson for his dedication to reimagining estate planning for his clients. His commitment to client-centric solutions is helping retirees secure their legacies with greater ease and confidence.

 

 

 

The Why Behind Estate Planning

The inheritance tsunami is already rolling in

Roughly $124 trillion is projected to move from Baby Boomers to Gen X and Millennials by 2048, an amount larger than the current U.S. GDP. Cerulli projects that Gen X and Millennial wealth will quintuple by 2030, yet a staggering 81% of heirs say they won’t keep their parents’ advisor. If estate plans aren’t part of your process, you’re standing on the sidelines of the greatest wealth transition in history.

Clients are still unprepared, and they know it

Despite the looming transfer, 72% of Americans lack an up-to-date will, and more than one-third have already witnessed family conflict because a plan was missing. They recognize the risk. 52% of Americans say dying without a plan is “irresponsible,” but they need a guide who can turn intent into action.

Managing the estate planning process positions you as the financial “quarterback”

Advisors are unique in that they sit at the intersection of legal, tax, and family dynamics. When you coordinate those conversations and orchestrate attorneys, CPAs, and family decision-makers, you don’t hand clients off and hope the ball comes back to you. You cement your role at the center of a client’s wealth universe.

Because you’re the only professional with a full 360-degree view of legal, tax, and family dynamics, clients see you as the indispensable coordinator of their legacy strategy.

A proven growth lever: estate planning as a door opener, relationship deepener, and ROI driver

Talking legacy reframes meetings from performance to protection: 40% of investors would switch advisors just to access estate-planning services, and 71% of U.S. adults say finishing a plan would make them feel like a better parent or partner.

Once implemented, estate planning removes friction and builds multi-generational trust.

  • One per week: Archer Investment Management guided 35 clients through Wealth.com in the first 35 weeks of adding the service. Read the success story here.
  • Workshop machine: Fiat Wealth Management booked 579 prospects and captured $39M+ in new assets by hosting estate-planning events. Read the success story here.
  • Hidden opportunities: Estate reviews surface undisclosed assets and new planning needs, protecting AUM and revealing upsell paths.

From hand-off to hands-on: the integrated digital flow

The old “Here’s a lawyer; call me when it’s done” referral breaks the client journey. A modern, advisor-led workspace keeps everything collaborative, trackable, and branded to your firm. It also is exactly the level of service and guidance clients are looking for.  

A year-one roadmap you can steal today

Top firms plug estate planning into their service calendar: Diagnose → Document → Share → Maintain. Those four touchpoints alone can drive double-digit plan completions in 12 months.

Ready to act? Start tomorrow with three simple moves: segment your book, engage the best-fit clients first, and host a family-legacy meeting to meet the next generation.

Download our “Estate Planning Quick-Start Checklist,” a step-by-step reference that shows you exactly how to add estate planning to your firm and keep your advisor seat at the center of every family’s financial future.

Get the Quick-Reference Checklist here.

Wealth.com makes adding estate planning to your firm’s service offerings seamless. It provides an advisor-led digital workspace that is collaborative and trackable where advisors can create high-caliber estate planning documents in minutes with optional legal review. A real-time status tracker, secure document vault, and role-based access keep heirs, attorneys, and CPAs aligned, and estate planning shifts from a one-off project to a repeatable, revenue-generating workflow.

 See the Wealth.com platform in action at www.wealth.com/demo.

 

Advisor Matt Gottshall Finds Wealth.com is an Invaluable Tool

 

Transcript:

I’m Matt Gottshall. I’m a financial advisor here at Balance Wealth Group, and I’ve been in the industry now for about 10 years. If you include my internships with the team. And I’ve been on htis team the entire time. We have this vision of being a one stop shop for people.

One of the biggest headaches and painpoints that we were having was we would give clients a list of action items after a meeting. It’d be four or five, sometimes less things. And one thing that was consistently not getting done was, getting thier estate planning documents created.

We are defining our success as being financial advisors. How do we empower action, the best that we can with our clients? And to us, it was trying to figure out how to bring estate planning in house. Wealth.com in particular has made a just an, an enormous impact on ourselves and our busienss and really the service that we’re able to provide to our clients.

The amount of doors and conversations that it has opened, the amount of trust that it has built from current and new prospective clients about the fact that we are gonna facilitate this entire process. It’s a big responsibility that we’re taking on to say that’s something that we do and help implement. But if you do it and you can integrate it into your systems and do it effectively, it is an invaluable tool to have because that is what people are looking for.

“It is an invaluable tool to have because that is what people are looking for.”

You’re already talking to them about estate planning in depth anyway. Why not bring them a solution that will allow them to get their documents done very easily at a very low or reasonable cost with your firm. It’s the ability not only to help people on the financial planning side, but also be able to help them on the estate planning side, and not just always refer them out, but be able to actually empower action with people and integrate that service into your model, and be able to do everything in one place.

And there are firms like ourselves that are doing it right now. There’s gonna be plenty more that are doing it in the future. And I think that in order to stay ahead in the financial planning industry and not get left behind, you have to be doing something like integrating a Wealth.com and providing that service to your clients.

“I think that in order to stay ahead in the financial planning industry and not get left behind, you have to be doing something like integrating Wealth.com.”

 

 

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How Ester® Helps Advisory Firms Level Up and Increase Efficiency

 

Transcript:

My name is Danny McAuliffe. I’m a financial advisor at Perigon Wealth Management. We were pretty particular in our due diligence process of, what we wanted to, what we were looking for in a partner.

One of the key components was actually estate plan creation. Before Wealth.com, we would have clients who would literally come to us and say, ‘Hey, I want an estate plan, but I don’t actually want to go hire an attorney.’ And so that piece can take anywhere from months to years to actually get something implemented, which can now through Wealth.com, somebody can create an estate plan in really minutes.

“Through Wealth.com, somebody can create an estate plan in really minutes.”

We’re looking for technology partners to make us better at our jobs. Make our advisors better at their jobs, kind of take an existing estate plan, dumb it down in a way that we can get useful information out of it, understand what’s there, and then take it to client meetings. And you know, make it useful for clients.

The AI extraction tool is probably one of the most useful features I think that we’ve come across so far. You know, we’ve plugged some pretty complex estate plans in there. We’ve really tried to kind of break it per se, and it’s really good. It kind of parses through the information, it extracts the useful bits. You might’ve been using control F to find, or if it was a PDF, that you couldn’t actually, control F would’ve taken you, you know, minutes of trying to reference table of contents, flip to that page, try to figure it out. You can actually get an Ester summary in two to three minutes. That’s as good as anything we can put together.

“The AI extraction tool is probably one of the most useful features I think that we’ve come across so far.”

One of the nice features is the reports that Wealth.com creates, can take a very complex estate plan and really break it down into a 10 to 12 page summary that is actually useful for clients to understand.

 

 

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Mike Kato Finds Wealth.com Intuitive, Easy to Use, and Fully Integrated

 

Transcript:

The biggest estate planning challenges my clients face are getting the right advice at the right time. My name is Mike Kato. I’m the head of financial planning at GC Wealth. My role is to design and develop our financial planning offering.

Relying upon traditional estate planning tools was not going to cut it. We had to go above and beyond, venture outside of the norms, and look for a technology partner that was going to put us at the forefront of that innovation. It had to be easily integrated into our platform and our service model, and it had to be easy to use and intuitive. Then we found out about Wealth.com.

It ticked all the boxes for us. It’s easy to use, it’s intuitive, it’s fully integrated. The client deliverables are polished and professional, and it really wows all the clients that we’ve shown it to.

“It’s easy to use, it’s intuitive, it’s fully integrated. The client deliverables are polished and professional, and it really wows all the clients that we’ve shown it to.”

I’ve been able to see an enormous peace of mind from the client’s perspective, reviewing documents, highlighting the key provisions, summarizing and consolidating that into a report and flowchart would take weeks. I can do that now in hours, and that is a game changer for us.

I see the future of Wealth.com playing a bigger and bigger role in enabling advisors to deliver that service efficiently and succinctly to clients. And you really just can’t put a price tag on that.

 

 

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Winning the Next Gen with Wealth.com

 

Transcript:

My name is Bruce Lee, founder and CEO of Keebeck Wealth Management. In the wealth management business, I’ve often said when you are working for a large bank or an institution, they have all those individuals, you know, held within a structure. But when you’re an independent, finding the right individuals to help you with those types of issues you have to kind of what I call build a digital army.

When Wealth.com came around, I actually did an extensive amount of research. I had to say, do I even understand this? And if I do, and it looks simple and elegant, it’s usually a go button for me. I felt that Wealth.com had that particular ‘It factor’ when it came to understanding what the client was looking for.

“I felt that Wealth.com had that particular ‘It factor’ when it came to understanding what the client was looking for.”

So when we tell them, “Hey, we’ve got a technology that can do it quicker, better, faster, it’s met with some skepticism. I’m so used to having a physical individual talk to me about my trust and estate, but after the education process, the amount of requests to continue to reuse Wealth.com was very, very high. And now it’s a tool where it’s almost second nature to us.

Never get too comfortable with the way you’re doing business. Less than, I think it’s 17% of the next gen is going to use their old advisor. We believe those children are going to be using these technologies as much as their trusted advisors. It brought us closer to the client because we were willing to be innovative with them, as opposed to just being that old-fashioned advisor.

 

 

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Estate and Wealth Planning Checklist

Adding value to a client doesn’t have to be complicated; sometimes, it’s as simple as making sure your client’s loved ones are taken care of if something were to happen to your client.

The checklists available to download below can be used to help clients optimize their planning — wherever they are in their estate planning journey.

But first, what is estate planning?

Estate planning encompasses two types of planning:

  1. Foundational estate planning, which is a “starter pack” of legal documents in case the client is incapacitated, unavailable, or has passed away.
  2. Wealth or tax planning, which is tax- or control-driven transfers into trusts, entities or accounts.

Every single one of your clients needs a foundational estate plan – and knows it. You can deliver massive value just by helping them check that box off. Then, you can graduate your client into the more complex transfers if they need it.

What Comprises the Foundational Estate Plan?

  1. Will
  2. Revocable or Living Trust
  3. Advance Directive Over Health Care Matters
  4. Durable Power of Attorney Over Financial Matters

Review the legal documents alongside all beneficiary designations (e.g., IRAs, 401 (k)s and life insurance) and right of survivorship designations (e.g., WROS on financial accounts and real estate). These designations override the Will or Trust, which may come as a surprise to your client. Designations are often used as stop gap solutions until someone has a proper Will or Trust, at which point the designations may be removed in favor of the estate or be “funded” (i.e., transferred) into the Trust.

*An attorney or digital estate planning platform like wealth.com can help your client determine if a Trust is more appropriate than a standalone Will. The key consideration is whether avoiding a full-blown probate process, including privacy, is important to your client.

Case Study

How often do you find wrong or missing beneficiaries when you go over the Will or Trust of a client (or potential client)?

Our partner Retirement Tax Services found that over 60% of prospective clients have wrong or missing beneficiaries, when they have an estate plan at all. That means the prospective client would be leaving assets to someone they didn’t expect at all. This is when the client has that “aha” or “I can’t believe this” moment.

Using the checklists included in the PDF below can help advisors create these “aha” moments and improve their clients overall financial wellbeing with better estate planning.

Estate Planning Checklist

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