While working in private practice as an estate planning attorney, Anne Rhodes, over the course of many interactions with financial advisors, came to understand how unapproachable her world could be for those in the financial services space.
It’s a problem Rhodes now has a chance to solve, as the chief legal officer at Wealth.com, an estate planning platform specializing in assisting advisors, which she joined in 2021.
With the introduction of its new AI-assisted service “Ester” earlier this year, Wealth.com stands at the center of several hot-button discussions roiling the advisory space, including how advisors can stay relevant in their clients’ lives as they mull their estate planning needs.
Wealth.com wants to “demystify” the estate planning process for advisors, according to Rhodes. Too often, advisors work with clients at the start of the process, but “hand off” clients to other experts as it progresses. Rhodes stressed that advisors may already work in the estate planning space without even knowing it by, for example, advising clients on beneficiary designations for 401(k)s, among other financial planning basics.
“The terms are floating out there, and advisors have heard them,” Rhodes said. “But tracing how they fit together, the pieces, I don’t think anyone has really done that for them. We think educating the financial advisor can only lead to good things for the client.”
Rhodes helps direct features for the platform, leading the legal term to ensure quality (and compliance requirements) are in place.
The chief concern for Rhodes and her team is that advisors do not inadvertantly engage in the practice of law. For example, while advisors can offer counsel, the clients themselves or their attorneys must draft the trusts; such a move isn’t within an advisor’s legal purview.
“At the end of the day, it should be the client making that decision,” she said. “We so, so care about the compliance of our customers, so (advisors drafting trusts is) one of the conveniences we have not unlocked.”
Rhodes explained that advisors are often “intimidated” by trusts, and often add costs by bringing on third-party attorneys to review them. “Anybody who has ever held a trust in their hands is intimidated about reading and combing through it…to figure out what it means,” Rhodes said.
Earlier this year, Wealth.com unveiled the aforementioned Ester, its AI-powered legal assistant, which lets advisors upload documents, like bank account statements, retirement accounts, previous estate plans and trusts, and get a summary of key information, including beneficiaries, in seconds.
“It allows you to have a complete picture as to where those assets … will go and whose hands they will go into after your client has passed away,” Rhodes said.
Ester’s capabilities will be centerstage for Rhodes and her team going into 2024. While Ester, thus far, has focused on wills and trust, Rhodes hopes to add “sub-trusts” (which can be contained within trusts and allow trustors more control over their assets after they die). The only way to train Ester to accurately read sub-trusts will be “through volume and a lot of manpower,” according to Rhodes.
She hopes that the tech Wealth.com advances helps advisors spend more time on client relationships and families, and less on the opaque intricacies of trusts.
As Wealth.com’s business continues to grow (they’re working with approximately 4,000 advisors), Rhodes is now able to attack so many of the “pain points” she saw as an attorney.
“There isn’t a single day when I log into my computer that I don’t feel fulfilled,” she said. “Every single day, I get to innovate at this company.”