AI: Advantageous for Advisors Looking to Automate Estate Planning

Advisors know that estate planning is an essential part of their service menu and one that’s a vital contributor in holistic practice offerings.

On the other hand, estate planning is laborious, document-intensive and tedious. It’s not a stretch to say this is one area of the advisory business that’s “stuck in the stone ages.” Thanks to FP Alpha, it’s possible for advisors to modernize estate planning services.

“FP Alpha is an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven comprehensive financial planning solution that enables advisors to provide actionable and personalized recommendations to clients in a scalable, intelligent, and cost-efficient manner across 16 disciplines, all while remaining complementary to current retirement planning software,” according to the firm.

In simple terms, FP Alpha leverages the power of AI, which is already disrupting other areas of the financial advisory business, to usher in a new, more modern era of estate planning services.

FP Alpha: Leading the Way in Estate Planning Modernization

FP Alpha’s Estate Planning Snapshot harnesses futuristic technology to usher in a new era of tech-driven estate planning efficiencies. Based on uploading a document, such as a will or trust, the software's AI generates a snapshot for the advisor summarizing and visualizing a client's current estate. Translation: The technology is here to provide a better estate planning mousetrap.

“You can’t scale estate planning without the use of technology and specifically Artificial Intelligence,” says FP Alpha founder Andrew Altfest. “You can usually only offer it for your wealthiest clients butt’s going to be manual, painful, time-consuming process without AI.”

Those burdens led to the creation of FP Alpha and more recently the addition of The Estate Snapshot to the platform. That speaks to relevance because advisors are increasingly searching for ways to provide more value to clients and add breadth to their offerings. For too long, many advisors believed they needed deep expertise in estate planning and if they didn’t possess those qualifications, they simply didn’t offer the service.

With FP Alpha and the Estate Snapshot, more advisors who have been unable to provide this key offering this key offering can enter the arena, potentially bolstering client outcomes and satisfaction in the process. Even with a summary provided by the Estate Snapshot, advisors have a powerful estate planning tool on their sides before delving into more technical details.

Another benefit of leveraging estate planning capabilities is that it is prime territory for improving client engagement. As advisors know, estate planning is a sensitive topic and by making it more efficient and approachable, advisors can improve and lengthen client relationships.

“These are really personal conversations,” says Altfest. “As soon as you get into estate planning and you find out that clients may not trust a family member or are having disagreements with heirs, you’re getting into some things that are very, very sensitive. This is an opportunity to connect with clients, forming another level of engagement with them and has proven to be an effective way to connect with the children of your clients

Visualize Estate Planning 

With the power of AI, the Estate Snapshot evolves estate planning from dry, academic-like documents, to a visual that’s not only illustrative, but informative as well.

“While there are current tools that exist to streamline the creation of estate planning documents and software that helps bring legacy planning into the larger conversation, nothing has existed to summarize and visualize the key components of a client's estate plan,” notes Altfest.

Add to that, FP Alpha can minimize estate planning costs for clients – something all clients are sure to like. That makes it even easier for advisors to engage clients on estate planning – a win-win for everyone involved.  And isn’t that the ultimate goal?

Related: Small Business Owners: When Your Business Is Your Estate