Fintech firms are disrupting the wealth management industry by focusing on investing for retirement, but much less attention has been paid to planning for what happens next. Wealth Inc., a digital estate planning platform co-founded by Rei Carvalho, former CEO of the fraud detection firm Emailage, has announced a $16 million seed funding round to fill the gap.
The platform is designed to help clients better manage their legacies by creating plans online through a combination of proprietary legal documents and encrypted digital vaults.
A Wealth Inc. survey of 10,000 people in December found only 13% of respondents currently have access to estate planning services as part of their employee benefits, yet more than 70% said they'd set up a plan if such services were offered.
While the company is aiming initially to offer its platform to human resources teams looking to provide benefits to their employees, the tech is also available to advisers, a spokesperson said.
“Life isn't static, and neither is estate planning,” Carvalho said in a statement. “Taking care of your family and having a plan for your assets is an ongoing job that requires a dynamic ecosystem.”
The cumbersome world of estate planning still relies primarily on handwritten signatures, paper documents and three-ring binders, with only a handful of forward-thinking advisers using digital vaults like DropBox.
Wealth is one of a number of companies looking to solve estate planning problems.
In September, basketball icon Michael Jordan participated in an $11.6 million funding round for startup Vanilla. Wealth management entrepreneur Steve Lockshin founded Vanilla in 2019 to fully digitize the process for registered investment advisers with a platform that automates client estate planning and document processing.
A major obstacle for advisers is they’re not specialized in estate planning and each state has a different set of legal requirements. Additionally, many clients think estate planning is only for the ultra wealthy, said Rafael Loureiro, co-founder and CEO of Wealth.
“We are changing that by providing the most comprehensive, accessible-for-everyone platform with an emphasis on education,” Loureiro said. “Everyone needs a plan, they may just not know it yet.”
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Pro-bitcoin professionals, however, say the cryptocurrency has ushered in change.
“LPL has evolved significantly over the last decade and still wants to scale up,” says one industry executive.
Survey findings from the Nationwide Retirement Institute offers pearls of planning wisdom from 60- to 65-year-olds, as well as insights into concerns.
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