Podcasts about moneyguidepro

With Rafael Loureiro, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Wealth.com Rafael Loureiro on why estate planning is shifting from a static legal exercise to an AI-powered, advisor-led planning process. In Summary Estate planning has traditionally operated outside the core advisor workflow—handled through attorneys, revisited infrequently, and often disconnected from the broader client relationship. Louis speaks with Rafael Loureiro, Co-Founder and CEO of Wealth.com, about how AI is beginning to change that model. The conversation explores how advisors can use tools like Ester to surface planning gaps, stay ahead of client changes, and deliver a more continuous planning experience. For advisors, the broader implication is strategic: as investment management becomes increasingly commoditized, integrated planning and ongoing coordination may become a far more meaningful differentiator. The Storyline Most advisors already discuss estate planning with clients. The challenge is what happens next. In many cases, the process still moves outside the advisor relationship: clients are referred to an attorney, documents are created, and the estate plan becomes something revisited only after a major life event or liquidity event forces an update. Louis and Rafael explore why that structure is starting to break down. Rafael's own estate planning experience following the sale of Emailage to LexisNexis exposed how fragmented the process could feel, even for highly engaged clients working with sophisticated advisors. That experience ultimately became the foundation for Wealth.com and its AI-powered planning platform, Ester. The discussion focuses less on AI as a headline topic and more on how it changes advisor workflow in practice—from document interpretation and planning summaries to surfacing next actions and helping advisors stay proactively engaged as client circumstances evolve. For advisors thinking about the future of planning, the conversation raises a larger question: if financial planning itself becomes increasingly standardized, where does the next layer of differentiation come from? Topics Covered Continuous estate planning AI-powered advisor workflows com and Ester Advisor-led estate planning Family office-style client service Trust and estate attorney collaboration Estate planning for mass affluent clients AI agents in wealth management Dynasty Financial Partners integration Advisor differentiation beyond investment management > Download a transcript of this episode… Listen and Learn Highlights for Advisors Why did Rafael decide to build Wealth.com? (06:04) Rafael explains how his own estate planning experience after a liquidity event exposed major disconnects between advisors, attorneys, and clients. Why did Wealth.com choose an advisor-led model instead of direct-to-consumer? (14:28) The platform was designed around the belief that advisors (not marketing campaigns) are best positioned to initiate estate planning conversations with clients. What does “continuous estate planning” actually mean? (20:13) Rafael describes a system where client life changes, tax events, and asset activity can trigger proactive advisor engagement rather than periodic document reviews. How does Ester move beyond document summarization? (32:30) The platform now identifies planning opportunities, prepares tasks and reports, and increasingly helps advisors automate portions of the planning workflow. Why are enterprise firms and large banks adopting platforms like Wealth.com? (24:57) Many firms were already producing estate planning summaries manually for ultra-high-net-worth clients. AI allows those capabilities to scale much more efficiently. How should advisors think about the role of trust and estate attorneys going forward? (26:50) Rafael argues that AI enhances – not replaces – the attorney relationship by improving efficiency and reserving more sophisticated matters for specialized legal expertise. What may differentiate advisory firms as planning becomes more commoditized? (38:02) The discussion points toward responsiveness, coordination, personalization, and deeper client integration as the next major competitive layer for advisors. Key Takeaways Rafael believes estate planning is shifting from a one-time legal exercise to a continuous planning process supported by AI and advisor engagement. Wealth.com was intentionally built as an advisor-first platform rather than a direct-to-consumer business. Ester's AI capabilities now extend beyond summarization into identifying planning gaps, surfacing opportunities, and preparing advisor workflows. Many firms are using estate planning as a way to deepen relationships and expand into more family-office-style service models. AI may allow advisors to serve more clients while maintaining a higher level of personalization and responsiveness. Trust and estate attorneys remain critical for complex situations, but AI can improve efficiency and help clients arrive better prepared. Advisors who fail to expand beyond investment management risk competing in an increasingly commoditized landscape. https://youtu.be/BDI6XbEz_4E Quotable Moments “When AI moves from simply organizing information to helping drive decisions, estate planning stops being a periodic task.” “Investment management is becoming table stakes. Financial planning is becoming table stakes.” “Why does it have to be that way? Now with AI, why can we not have continuous estate planning?” “It is the intangibles.” “My goal is to empower the advisor.” Related Resources Human Intelligence in the Age of AI: Why Recruiters Still MatterArtificial intelligence can analyze firms and deals. It can't replace the insight and advocacy that help advisors make the right move. The Future of Prospecting: How AI Is Powering the Next Era of Advisor GrowthFINNY Co-Founder Eden Ovadia shares how AI is transforming advisor prospecting: automating outreach, matching advisors with ideal clients, and freeing time for deeper human connection. A forward-looking conversation on what growth will look like in the next era of wealth management. Rafael LoureiroCo-Founder and CEO Rafael Loureiro is a technology entrepreneur and product-focused executive with more than 20 years of experience across startups, growth-stage companies, and Fortune 500 organizations. He is Co-Founder and CEO of Wealth.com, a leading estate and tax planning platform powered by proprietary AI and purpose-built for financial institutions. Under his leadership, Wealth.com has expanded into a comprehensive planning platform, embedding deterministic AI to deliver precise, auditable outcomes across estate and tax workflows. Prior to founding Wealth.com, Rafael served as Chief Technology Officer at Emailage, a global fraud prevention SaaS company acquired by RELX in 2020. He is a member of the Forbes Finance Council and has been recognized across the industry, including CEO of the Year honors and Forbes' Top AI Founders to Watch. Originally from France and raised in Brazil, Rafael now resides with his family in the Phoenix metro area. NOTE: The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Diamond Consultants. Neither Diamond Consultants nor the guests on this podcast are compensated in any way for their participation. View the transcript of this episode… Why AI Matters Now: Filling the Estate Planning Gap with Wealth.com A conversation with Louis Diamond and Rafael Loureiro, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer at Wealth.com. Louis Diamond: Welcome to the latest episode of our podcast series for financial advisors. Today’s episode is Why AI Matters Now: Filling the Estate Planning Gap with Wealth.com. It’s a conversation with Rafael Loureiro, the firm’s Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer. I’m Louis Diamond and this is the Diamond Podcast for Financial Advisors. Mindy Diamond: At Diamond Consultants, we help elite advisors identify the right environment for their businesses to thrive, whether that’s at a wire house, boutique, or independent firm. With nearly three decades of experience, we’ve guided thousands of advisors and represented more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in assets transitioned, and each year, one in four advisors managing a billion dollars or more who change firms are our clients. Our process is education driven and based on building relationships, starting as your strategic partner well before you’re even thinking of a move. To schedule a confidential conversation, call us at 908-879-1002. Wondering why advisors change firms and where they’re headed? Are transition deals going up or down? Those very questions and more inspired us to create our annual Advisor Transition Report. It’s the award-winning data-driven resource designed for advisors that connects the dots between the motivations around movement and the firm’s appetite for top talent. Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to make smart decisions. Download your copy at diamond-consultants.com/transitionreport. Louis Diamond: In the wealth management world, estate planning has largely lived in a separate lane. It’s a topic advisors may raise with clients then hand off to an attorney and eventually a set of documents come back, filed away, rarely revisited, and often disconnected from the rest of the planning process. That structure has been in place for a long time and for the most part, it’s gotten unquestioned, but when you step back, it creates a gap between what do clients expect from their advisor and what actually gets delivered when it comes to estate planning. Rafael Loureiro, co-founder and CEO of Wealth.com, ran straight into the gap after a planning event of his own which should have been a coordinated process, felt fragmented, manual, and surprisingly opaque. And likewise, I recall the same type of disjointed experience in my own estate planning process. It’s experiences like these that became the starting point for building Wealth.com. What makes this story interesting isn’t just that they’re using AI but how they’re using it inside the estate planning process, and it’s how AI allows the model itself to change from a one-time legal event to something that evolves alongside the client, from static documents to a system that can actually interpret, update, and surface what matters, from a disconnected handoff to something the advisor can actively lead. In my conversation with Rafael, we get into how that plays out in practice, how tools like Ester move from summarizing estate documents to identifying gaps, to prompting next steps, and eventually preparing action on behalf of the advisor, because when AI moves from simply organizing information to helping drive decisions, estate planning stops being a periodic task and starts to look more like a continuous part of the advice process. So let’s dive in. Rafael, thank you for coming on our show today. Rafael Loureiro: My pleasure, Louis. Thank you for having me here. Louis Diamond: Of course. Let’s jump in and in researching you and speaking to you in the past, I got to admit, you had a very different path into the wealth management industry probably than anyone I’ve ever interviewed. So can you walk us through your background briefly and early professional endeavors? Rafael Loureiro: Absolutely. The accent that you hear is Brazilian. So I’ve been in the US for 25 years. I’m a software engineer by trade, came here as a HMB, been involved with different companies over the years and then most recently before Wealth.com. I was a chief technology officer with a fraud prevention company, nothing to do with wealth management, but by selling that company, it’s how the Wealth.com story started. Louis Diamond: Perfect. And I was referring to also some of your early career endeavors even before founding your last company, if you’re comfortable sharing that. Rafael Loureiro: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been involved with four different startups in different spaces. One of them was in, if you remember all the way back to 2008, the real estate prices, the first startup with foreclosures. So when houses went into foreclosures, me and my partner, we created a system to index that. I also had work on a photo album company. It became a lifetime business. It’s still running. I was the CTO and I did my share of consulting. I used to work for Accenture, Avanade, and then a home builder Fortune 500 companies. So I have a ton of experience in the technology space before Wealth.com. Louis Diamond: Perfect. And you mentioned the last business that you started that I believe sold to LexisNexis. Can you walk through what that business was? Rafael Loureiro: Yeah. So I did not start the business. I joined the business before Series A. The person that started the business, Rei Carvalho, he’s actually Wealth.com chairman. So the team is still together. The US, San Francisco, New York, offices in Sydney, Singapore, London. We serve clients like Coinbase, grew very fast and then got acquired by LexisNexis in 2020 during peak COVID. Think about, we literally signed the documents, popped the champagne on March 2020. No vaccine. Louis Diamond: Oh, my God. Rafael Loureiro: We literally popped the champagne and we all went back home to work from home because that was the guy that’s from LexisNexis. Through that experience, selling a company, one thing you usually do, it’s a big liquidity event and estate planning is always related to big moments. You get married, someone in your family die, you have a new kid, you have a liquidated event. So I work with a financial advisor. They’re amazing. They helped me with financial planning, wealth management, saved me a lot of money insurance. But when it was time to do the estate planning, Louis, my experience was, “Hey, Rafael, we always work with this lawyer, go talk to the lawyer.” And then it was a completely broken process. First, because it was COVID and I had to go see the lawyer face-to-face. That was weird right there. Second, because I was expecting the lawyer to know everything about me because my advisor knows everything about me, know about my life situation, know about liquid event, know about my kids, rental houses, everything and then the engineer. I know what I told the lawyer, but do I know for sure that everything I told the lawyer end up in the document? No, I don’t. Long story short, otherwise it is a long story, we’re having a virtual coffee. I don’t know if you remember everyone, big beard, long hair, everyone working from home, and then somehow all the Emailage C-level team and founders, the co-founders, we start complaining about state plan. Even another example, my chairman, the Wealth.com chairman, Emailage CEO, Rei Carvalho, he was like, “Hey, Rafael, I’m done with the summer heat in Arizona. I’m moving to Denver. I’m going for cooler weathers.” Literally the moment he moved to Denver, he gets a call from his estate planning lawyer, welcome him to Denver and saying, “Hey, we need to update your documents. “But I just spent thousands of dollars creating my documents.” “Yeah, but you live in a new state, you have to optimize your documents.” At that moment, Louis, we’re like, “Where there’s a problem, there is an opportunity,” and the company was born. Louis Diamond: I find the best company origin stories, it’s you have that, you have a personal experience or a moment where you have a realization that there’s a problem that you have that others might have as well, so let’s create a business around solving this problem. It was legitimately at that point, it wasn’t a long burn, we’re going to research, we’re really going to think about this, it was just all of the core team that was fortunate enough to have a big liquidity event were complaining and commiserating about a similar problem on estate planning and then that launched into, let’s build a company, let’s build a platform, a product to solve this problem? Rafael Loureiro: Yes and no. We saw the opportunity. We had just finished selling a company. It takes a lot from you and your family to create a company and to sell a company. Before we started a new company, we said, “Hey, look, we feel like there is something here, but let’s do the proper groundwork, make sure that the market is right, that there is a need that it’s not only us complaining about these.” I’m going to say that we spend a good three month, we have vision document together, doing a market research and then we got excited. Literally my wife who was not super excited in the beginning said, “You guys just sold a company. You’ve been racing 100 miles an hour for the last seven, eight years and you guys going to do this again.” But I love it. It’s part of my DNA. I love the challenge. I love to build and it is a big problem. When you look at the US market, 67% of the population don’t have estate planning. You have to ask yourself, why? Is that because it costs too much money? Is that because people don’t know enough about estate planning that they don’t do it? Is that because people don’t have to think about that? So the opportunity is there. We did the groundwork. We got the team together, at least some of our eight players. We went to Altus Capital, that’s the same venture firm that led the Emailage series B and we said, “Look, we have a vision, we have a team and we believe the market is ready for it. There is no dominant player and it is blue ocean.” And then they gave us the initial funding, them and my chairman, and then we went from having an idea to launching the product in May 2022. Louis Diamond: Wow, that’s amazing. Before we dive into the rapid growth and what the platform looks like, et cetera, can you just give us a quick overview of what Wealth.com looks like today? Who are you serving? Who are you selling to and where does it fit into an advisor’s value proposition or their advice stack, if you will? Rafael Loureiro: Absolutely. So Wealth.com we empower financial advisors to provide a family office experience to their clients starting with estate planning and tax planning. What I’m trying to solve, Louis, is my situation. I want my financial advisor to be the hub of my needs. So if the need is financial planning, wealth management, insurance, estate planning, tax planning, I need my financial advisor to be aware of all these verticals, right? Because I know if something happens to one of us, my financial advisor is my person. He or she’s going to get my call from my wife and say, “Hey, am I all right?” I want to empower the financial advisor with all the tools to provide that family office experience to their client. So that’s first, we started by providing doc migration. So think of this, you are mass affluent client, between half a million dollars all the way to 10 million dollars. You don’t have your revocable trust, your will, your power of attorney, your advanced healthcare directive, your guardianship documents. We do that. We create those documents. You go to the workflow on the Wealth.com platform if you have an advisor, I need to make that clear, we’re not direct to consumer business. You have to have an advisor. So you go to that workflow and at the end of the workflow, you get the documents. Those are legally optimized, all the documents. The document you get in California is going to be completely different from the document you get in New York, from the document you get in Florida. I just want to make that point clear. What we noticed, Louis, working with these advisors is if you look at the average advisor, if you look at his or her book of business, 80% is mass affluent. So think lawyers, doctors, firemen, 20% high net worth. Usually the high net worth clients, ultra-high network clients, they already have the documents. They already paid $20,000 to have those documents draft and we were not doing anything for them. So in 2022, we had that light bulb moment even before LLMs. OpenAI launched in 2022, we actually used the Bertha model before OpenAI, but I know I’m digressing. Let me get back here. So I was not doing anything for these high net worth, ultra-high net worth clients. So we had this idea, what if we use AI to read their existing plans, all their grants, LATs, all this sophisticated irrevocable trust, connect to all their assets and then provide a summary of everything they have in place? So that was the idea in 2022. Can we do it? And we did it and that became Ester and that became our family office experience. So just to summarize, we help the advisor clients regardless where they fall in the wealthy spectrum. They don’t have the estate planning documents, we create them. If they already have the estate planning documents, we use AI to read this documents, summarize them and provide insight and observations. “Hey, here are ways that you can optimize these documents.” That’s what we do. Louis Diamond: It’s so valuable. I wish I met you a month ago because I went through a very expensive estate planning exercise with an estate planning attorney and my own personal experience is exactly the same that you had. It’s expensive. I have no idea what I was signing. It was a long questionnaire and it wasn’t driven necessarily by my advisor. They gave me the idea to get updated estate plans, but it was a disconnected process. So this makes a ton of sense. I think let’s pull on the thread of being a direct to advisor company rather than trying to pull an end around the advisor and going directly to a consumer. Why was that an important design decision for you? Because I would assume the total adjustable market might be a little bit bigger if you’re going direct to a retail client that may or may not have an advisor versus going directly to a business, an RIA, a wealth management firm, et cetera. Rafael Loureiro: Yeah. What we notice working within these spaces, something triggers you to do your estate planning. I’m not going to ask why you decide to do yours now, but usually it’s related to death in the family, a kid going to college, you buy a new house, you have a new baby, you’re getting married, you get a divorce. Direct to consumer, you have to find the client at that moment for them to consider estate planning as an important thing to do. There’s actually surveys. I think Fidelity put a survey out, that says family is the main reason why people do estate planning. And the second reason is the advisor. So if you work with a financial advisor, most likely he or she’s going to make you do your estate planning. So we did not want to be on the direct to consumer place spending millions and millions of dollars in marketing. We’d rather spend millions and millions of dollars in AI and technology and serve the advisor and empower the advisor to have this conversation and go to you and say, “Hey, Louis, how is it possible that you don’t have your estate planning document? Let’s do this now.” And I know this is uncomfortable. There’s another survey that came out recently saying that some of the advisors don’t want to talk about that. It’s still a hard subject to approach, but we have to have this conversation. Louis Diamond: I would say it almost sounds like an advisor not wanting to talk about their fees. Let’s not talk about that because it’s uncomfortable and no one wants to hear about it. Rafael Loureiro: Oh, you have to have it because they saw a huge lack of education. For example, one thing that we come across all the time, and I know it’s minor, is kids going to college. “Oh yeah, my daughter’s going to college. I don’t have to do anything.” Yeah, you do. She needs an advanced healthcare directive because if you don’t have one and something happens to her, you cannot just go to the hospital and ask for information. They won’t give it to you. We need to educate our clients. We need to do a better job. And I think advisors play that role and we want to empower them to talk about estate planning and tax planning. Louis Diamond: It makes sense. It’s a brilliant strategy because instead of advisors selling against Wealth.com as like, “I can do better and I have a estate planning guy I can refer you to,” it’s you’re working alongside them and you rely upon the advisor to provide the education to be the trigger moment. And I know again, from personal experience, if my advisor didn’t suggest that I should update my estate planning documents because I moved states, I wouldn’t have done it. It’s not like a fun thing to do. It’s an expense, et cetera. So that makes a ton of sense. You’re partnering with the hub or the influencers, if you will, of who’s driving estate planning in this country. It’s a great strategy. Rafael Loureiro: And you said something very important and I want to highlight, the world is very different after COVID. Before COVID, some of these advisors, all their clients were in the same city. I had one estate planning lawyer to help my clients, right? But now with after COVID or during COVID, people moved. “Oh yeah, I’m not living in a farm. Oh, I moved to Montana. Montana is beautiful. I saw Landman or Yellowstone. Now I’m leaving Montana. Landman is in Texas.” How? Now you don’t have estate planning lawyer in Texas. You don’t have estate planning lawyer in Montana. With the right partnership with Wealth.com, now you can serve all your clients regardless where they are in the US because we are present in every jurisdiction and we have lawyers in every jurisdiction. So we empower you to serve clients regardless where they are in the US. Louis Diamond: Very cool. And how about the pricing model? You don’t have to say what it costs, but is it one license that a firm is buying on behalf of their entire client base or is there an incremental cost for each client? And I’m throwing a lot at you. And then third part of the question is, are you seeing advisors charge directly for the Wealth.com estate planning output or are folks wrapping it into their fee as just a value added service as part of their planning and comprehensive wealth management process? Rafael Loureiro: Very good question. My goal, our goal, has always been we want to make estate planning available, democratized estate planning, make it more accessible to the population. So the way we charge is we charge the advisor annual recurring fee. We do not charge per document. I want you to provide estate planning to all your clients. That’s our goal. I don’t want you to think, oh, but that’s going to cost me money. No, all your clients set them all up with estate planning. Are they charging? It depends. So the way I’m going to say this is, I’m going to say that 60% of my advisors are charging not for the documents because they’re not lawyers, they’re charging to help educate you on estate planning. You as a client, you have to go to the process yourself to get the documents. So that’s where an advisor would send an invitation to Wealth.com. You and your wife or your partner, you’re going to go to the workflow and you’re going to get the document at the end. But the advisor is going to set up a call with you, the advisor is going to help you collect the documents. The advisor is going to educate you why estate planning is important. And some of them are charging for this. Some of our advisors, more on the high net worth, alternate high net worth space, you already charge a very good fee to provide your service so they probably provide Ester output, I should say, as a value added service. It depends on the use case. Louis Diamond: Makes sense. So I’ve heard you talk in interviews about a major gap in estate planning between client expectations and what a client is expecting, hoping to get with estate planning, especially when it comes to interacting with their financial advisor and what is actually fundamentally delivered by advisors. So I’m curious, why is there a gap and why do you think that gap has existed for so long? Is it as simple as people don’t like talking about death and it’s expensive or is there a deeper answer? Rafael Loureiro: I think it’s all of the above and your experience is amazing. You pretty much, you are the typical client. You took long to do it. It costs you a lot of money. You’re now like, next time you have to do an update, you’re going to wait five to 10 years to do it because we spend thousands of dollars to get it updated. Why does it have to be like that? And now with AI, and that’s what I think is going to change a lot in the next five years, is why can we not have continuous estate planning? What I mean by that is work with your advisor. I have connection to all your assets. I have connection to CRM. I have connection to your bank account. If you give me access, I don’t need password, but you can actually connect all your assets, I have connection to the portfolio management platform. So as you live your life, as you get married, as you buy a property… You finally decide to buy a property in Tahoe, I get these pings and then I can empower your advisors to say, “Hey, go talk to Louis and say, hey, it’s time to update your estate plan.” Or a rental property outside your home state in California, you need to update your… Or he has just crossed a tax threshold or he just got married or he just had a new beneficiary. My goal is to empower the financial advisor to provide more and more value to this relationship. I’m not trying to replace the financial advisor, but I’m trying to empower him or her to give you more value so him or her becomes more critical for your relationship. Why people haven’t done estate planning I think is a lack of education, is the fear of the cost. “Oh, I have to talk to a lawyer. Oh my gosh, that’s going to cost me $5,000.” I want to make this easier. I want to make this simple. I want to empower the advisor to demystify estate planning and tax planning, make it more accessible, bring the estate planning more to the middle. What I mean by that is why is this estate planning exclusive to the high net worth, ultra-high net worth? Because in that space, 90% of the people have estate planning, 90% of the people. It’s the fear of the cost, I think, and then people don’t want to think about that. Louis Diamond: Yeah. I think that’s exactly right. Yeah. It very much sounds like it’s a win-win. It’s like a next best action type event where you’re giving an advisor on a silver platter a way to add value, which is what I think every advisor wants to do and then it’s a massive value add to the end client. My guess is you don’t have much friction in delivering those sorts of insights to advisors that they can then deliver to their clients. Rafael Loureiro: I would say if you’re not doing it, there is a big risk. You’re going to lose your clients to people that are doing it and they are providing the family office experience. Yeah. Louis Diamond: Yeah. What about the competitive landscape for Wealth.com, whether it’s other FinTechs that are attempting to do something in the space or even just the legacy advisor, the estate planning attorney in town or an advisor’s preferred T&E attorney. How do you think about the competitive landscape in the trust and estate world today? Rafael Loureiro: There are competitors. From day zero when we came in, there were competitors. I don’t see an incumbent. I think now we have became the incumbent. I think there is a segment of the market, just to paint a picture, one third of the advisors are going to retire in the next 10 years. So there is a segment in the market where to your point, they already work with a estate planning lawyer. That’s not a bad thing. They’re like, “Oh yeah, I get leads from this lawyer. My clients are all located in my neighborhood. I don’t need to provide out of state estate planning,” then we’re not going to get there.” But at the same time, if you look at our growth, we’ve been growing and that’s why we just raised a series B, our growth is out there to prove it, we’ve been tripling the company size every year. There’s a need, there’s a demand. Financial advisors are waking up. They are in a very competitive market. They need to provide more to the clients because I feel like investment management, it is becoming table stakes. Financial planning, it is table stakes. So what else can I offer my clients? And that’s why you see some advisory firms offering BillPay. I file your taxes. I’ll get your estate planning done. You got to differentiate yourself. We’re seeing the need. If you look at our penetration, we have now 2,000 firms on the platform and the firms go from independent, a small SMB advisor with one or two advisors in the office, all the way to the top three, three out of the top five banks in the US. We are there, right? Louis Diamond: Wow. It’s interesting. Let’s talk about that. So on the bank side, it’s typically not a segment that is ripe for technological disruption or external tools like this to come in and make a dent. How are banks and very large platforms thinking about Wealth.com? Is it a similar kind of buying journey or decision that an individual RIA or an individual advisor would make or is it a little bit different? Rafael Loureiro: It’s a little bit different. So without mentioning names, these banks, some of these banks that work with high net worth, ultra-high net worth clients, they were providing this summary report that Ester put together, they were, before Esther, but it was taking them 30 to 50 hours. All human labor to put one together, Excel, Visa, PowerPoint, 30 to 50 hours. Even to these very expensive, very wealthy clients, they were only doing once a year. “Hey, here’s your report.” “Oh yeah, but I just sold the house in St. Barts. Can I get a new update?” “No. Next year you’re going to get the update.” I’m not even kidding. It was serious. So they were doing the work, but it was all labor-intensive. Now with Wealth, a much better output, I should say, it’s take minutes. And instead of only reserving these to the very, very wealthy clients, now they can go downstream and offer this to their mass affluent clients and then high net worth clients. They’re all seeing the need. They’re all waking up because they were doing the work, but it was all labor-intensive, like I said, all manual before and they want to automate. Louis Diamond: Very interesting. I definitely want to spend some time talking about Ester. You mentioned it a few times, but before that, I’d say two very real strategic areas that a firm might take on when it comes to estate planning. The first one is a lot of very successful advisors, they cultivate amazing COI referral relationships with attorneys and usually the attorneys are T&E attorneys for obvious reasons. Have you gotten pushback or have you seen that because of Wealth.com, these advisors now are referring less business to these high-powered trust and estates attorneys and then they’re not able to grow their business as much in return. That’s one question if you can weigh in. Rafael Loureiro: I have not heard that. And just to clarify, I think with Wealth, having Wealth as part of your tool framework, you’re going to be able to serve more clients and still leverage your trust estate attorney. And I’ll explain how. For example, we know how to stay our lane. So let’s say you go into the workflow and as part of the workflow, you say, “Hey, I have a special needs child.” At that moment we say, “Stop. Let me put you in touch with a lawyer.” You can decide to use your own lawyer or you can use one of in our network. We have lawyers in every jurisdiction, but it’s up to you. We focus on the revocable trusts and the wealth. If your client requires something more sophisticated, you can still use Wealth.com to map out the client’s situation using Ester. You’re going to be able to see everything they have in place at that moment and then use your relationship, your trust and estate lawyer to make the document update. So I think what we are doing is reserving the most complex case for the trust and estate lawyer if a document needs update, but I don’t think you are breaking that relationship. That relationship will stay there and you’re still going to have that lead exchange, but I don’t have any numbers to answer your question. Louis Diamond: I think that makes sense. It’s not like with Wealth.com, at least not yet. It’s not like there isn’t a role for a T&E attorney and especially for more complex esoteric type situations, an advisor could still refer some of their relationships to a T&E attorney, but they’ll come armed with better information. And also with more clients getting involved with estate planning, there’s also conceivably more opportunities that they can refer out to an estate planning attorney in turn. Rafael Loureiro: Can I use that? You did a much better job than I did. Exactly. Exactly what you said. The difference is now your advisor, your clients are going to be much better informed, that they know exactly what they need from the lawyer. So yeah, 100%. Louis Diamond: Perfect. And then the other one, which is I’d say less commonplace, but it’s a trend. The trend, and you hit on it, that as investments are becoming commoditized or not as differentiated, advisors are being called on to offer more and more services, whether it’s tax preparation in-house or bill pay or picking up clients’ dry cleaning, et cetera. But I think a big area that I’ve seen firms invest in is an in -house trust and estate attorney. Do you think Wealth.com is taking some of the sizzle out of that in-house service or is it just different? Is it two different use cases? Rafael Loureiro: It’s two different uses cases and we actually sell to that use case where if you have your trust estate attorneys in-house, we actually leverage them and they become users on the platform. Going back to my previous answer, now with Wealth.com, you’re going to be able to serve more clients with estate planning. You can actually route some of the use cases back to your trust estate team through Wealth.com. They do whatever they have to do and then you’re able to serve more clients. An example, trust and estate lawyers, they had to read the documents before Wealth.com. They would spend countless hours reading a hundred-page documents. Now with Esther, we do the summarization. We show your trust estate team where all the information was extracted. So instead of reading one document per hour, you’re going to be able to read three documents per hour and visualize the client estate plan and be able to optimize it because we’ve provided insights and suggestions and then the trust and estate lawyer can provide their own and say, “Hey, no, I agree with this one,” or “I think we should also do this.” I think you’re going to optimize the use of your trust estate team. You’re not going to get rid of them. No. Louis Diamond: It’s more so you’re automating the high value differentiated work. It also kind of sounds like, I don’t know when eMoney or MoneyGuidePro came into the mainstream, but it’s almost a difference between a paraplanner for a firm, manually creating pie charts in Excel and PowerPoint and analyzing a bunch of stuff and then eMoney and MoneyGuidePro and NaviPlan and all these companies come about and all of a sudden a lot of the work is automated. And it’s not like a paraplanner is out of work. They just become the experts, the users of the platform and they can allocate their attention to higher value, more bespoke work rather than we’ll say more of the factory kind of below the line things that was taking up a lot of their time. Rafael Loureiro: Absolutely. I like to use the analogy of the shoemaker. In the past, the shoemaker would make one shoe. It would be a beautiful shoe, but he would make one shoe a week or every two days. Now you have specialized agents. All that agent does is read estate planning documents. All that agent does is enriching the documents with insight and observations and looking to all the legal law changes that happened recently. So now you’re able to still make the same high quality shoe, but just at a higher volume. And you have a lot of dedicated workers doing one thing and doing one thing extremely well. So my goal is to empower the shoemaker. My goal is to empower the advisor and with a thousand analysts, a thousand paraplanners. So just making my job more efficient. Louis Diamond: I love it. You fit in Ester a good bit. It seems fairly clear what Ester’s doing. Sounds like an amazing value add. Just given the pace of AI innovation and I don’t think anyone knows where it’s going, but what are you most excited about Ester being able to do either now or in the future and what’s the vision if you can project out a year, which seems like an eternity in AI time, what’s on the dream board for what Ester’s going to be able to do for your Wealth.com clients? Rafael Loureiro: As a technologist, I love this question. I see AI in three distinct phases. You had the first phase of Ester in 2022, 2023 when we launched, which was summaries. It was amazing summarizing data. Some of these clients, Louis, think about this, some of these clients, they have 13 documents in place. They had every type of irrevocable trust you can imagine plus a revocable trust in place. They had very complicated assets, very complex assets. So Ester was amazing in summarizing. That was phase number one. Phase number two is now being able to augment. You read the data, you see an opportunity and you create a task that’s right there in front of the advisor saying, “Hey, I think you should reach out to this client and include this report with some of these observations. Click this button if you agree.” You still involve the advisor, the human is still in the loop. And that’s what we are with Ester right now. We do that. We assess the data, we see the opportunity, we involve the advisor, advisor get involved and say, “Yes, let’s do this,” and click a button, an email is triggered, our report is attached. Here we go. The third phase and that’s coming next and very soon is now you have an agent acting on the behalf of the advisor. I still want to make sure, and I want to make this very clear, I don’t want to get myself in trouble, the devices always evolve, but you have all these specific agents, that’s tax planning agent, that’s the estate planning agent, work independently, connected to the world, extremely well-trained with thousands and thousands of documents that we’ve seen over the years, finding opportunities, creating the tasks, creating the emails, creating the report, having everything ready to go, just waiting for the advisor to say, “Do it.” And we do this enough to the point where the advisor is going to say, “All right, you don’t need my permission anymore to do this specific task. Go.” You connect to the IRS, you download the text transcript, you crunch to this data, you create a report and it’s ready to go. The other thing too is I want to be able, my goal in the next year, a year and a half, is I want to continue estate planning. Up to this point, estate planning has been exactly like you described. You go to a lawyer, you pay thousands and thousands of dollars and those documents start collecting dust in a shelf somewhere while you live your life. And being from this space, that’s not how it works. There is new legislation being passed OBBA became like you crossed tax threshold, you have liquidated events, you get married, you get divorced, you buy real estate property, so on and so forth and that document is already stale. Why does it have to be that way? Now with AI, now with the technology we have in place, it won’t be. I promise you. Louis Diamond: Very cool. That’s exciting. That sounds like the perfect evolution of AI from summary, just here’s something you can read quickly to suggesting action, to then taking action. It does seem like the flow that it’s been and I’m sure there’s 15 other flows from here that we don’t even know yet. Or you probably do because you’re in this, but for me, I can’t even imagine what phase four and five are going to look like for you. Rafael Loureiro: Yes, it’s exciting. Louis Diamond: Definitely is. I saw, when I was doing some research for this that Wealth.com announced a fairly major strategic partnership with Dynasty Financial Partners, embedding Ester into their Dynasty desktop. What do you think this partnership says about where the business is going and how do you expect advisors to really take advantage of this in practice? Rafael Loureiro: It was a new development. We’re super excited about the Dynasty Financial Partnership. Before, if you look at before this partnership, we would have to empower advisor one by one with a Wealth.com license. With this partnership with Dynasty, every advisor in the Dynasty family or using the Dynasty desktop is going to be able to use Ester. So they’re going to be furnished with an AI intelligence that they can ask any estate planning questions, they can get tax planning questions answered. They’re going to be able to upload their clients’ estate planning documents and get a summary with opportunities, with everything that they can do for those estate planning documents. I think it fits perfectly well for enterprise IRAs, wire houses, this solution. Instead of doing one by one, you can actually have AI for all your advisors at once answering their most basic questions and taking action. That’s literally like the agents I was trying to describe. So that’s just the first step in that direction and we’re super excited about this. Louis Diamond: Very cool. Let me ask you another one. So you said earlier that as investment management becomes more commoditized that advisors not only have to offer more services and provide more value, but they also have to differentiate from the advisor or the firm across the street to provide more family office services, if you will. But let’s say, and this will be great for you, Wealth.com becomes like air that everyone’s breathing. It almost becomes like financial planning tool, e-Money. It’s commonplace. Now it’s commoditized across the space, it’s not a differentiator anymore to offer financial planning. As Wealth.com expands more firms work with the platform, what do you think is the next layer or next level of differentiation that your clients then can point to if it’s no longer maybe a couple of years from now that we use Wealth.com that we help with estate planning? Rafael Loureiro: Wow, that’s an interesting one, and approach my wife and bring ideas and suggestions. For me, if I can make that happen where the financial advisor is helping with my taxes, so when it’s tax time, we just have to have a one-hour meeting and we’re ready to click a button and have everything done, that can help me with BillPay. And think about like high net worth and ultra-high net worth people where it becomes extremely complicated to do BillPay properly because you have to pay from the right account, from the right trust. If they can take this off my plate so I can focus 100% in my business and my family, it’s mission accomplished. If that means that they’re going to walk my dog to make this happen, I know I’m exaggerating here, but pick up my laundry like the example you use, I think you’re going to have to do this. That in my mind is how these financial advisors survive the AI revolution. It is that personal relationship. It’s knowing me well. It’s spending more time with me than once a quarter. And with AI, with the right AI, and I know AI, there’s a lot of smoke in this space and very little fire, but with the right agents, with the right workflows, one advisor is going to be able to serve more than a hundred clients. Because right now the ratio is a hundred clients per advisor, maybe you’re going to be able to serve like 200, 250 well. Serve them well, knowing them well, knowing them personally. I think that’s going to happen in the next couple of years. Louis Diamond: I think that’s right. It’s more so like the intangibles that an advisor has. Their secret sauce isn’t going to be necessarily we offer these seven things. It’s going to be, I really get you. I understand you. It’s the advisor’s personal relationship and empathy with that client and all the years that they’ve known them. And then it’s just using all these different tools to aid that relationship. It kind of sounds like that’s what you’re saying. It’s all the other stuff that advisors do that might be different today, over time, people catch up and that becomes commoditized similar to we offer financial planning and that’s a differentiator. Now it’s, if they don’t offer financial planning, it’s a problem. Rafael Loureiro: Yeah, 100%. You got it. Yes, it is the intangibles. That’s perfect. Louis Diamond: Okay. I got two more questions for you. What’s one thing you wish more advisors understood about estate planning that they still miss today? Rafael Loureiro: I think there is an education component. Just deploying Wealth.com and expecting is going to work with your clients. It’s not like that. You need to be willing to have the conversation like your advisor did it with you. You need to have the tough call and say, “Hey, are you ready? Do you have estate planning in place? Why not?” And then having that conversation. Louis Diamond: And I would imagine too, it’s also cool, I got all these documents so instead of it getting locked in the safe or locked in the drawer, it’s also incumbent on the advisor to explain the documents. “Hey, these are a bunch of stuff in here that whatever, we don’t have to get into, but here’s the four key things about this document that you should understand. The power of attorney we’ve nominated is your father-in-law. Your proceeds are going to get distributed one-third to your son, a quarter to your daughter,” et cetera. It’s going to be those things and translating the documents into real words that clients are going to understand. Rafael Loureiro: 100%. That is critical because I’m a software engineer, I’m not equipped to be reading a hundred pages document and trying to understand everything that’s there without … Now with AI, you can actually ask Claude to summarize and Gemini to summarize it, but that was not the case three years ago. So that education component is critical. And some of my advisors are actually very successful, I should say. A smaller firm in this case, I’m not going to say the names, I don’t have that permission to say their name, but they are actually doing these estate planning webinars as a lead generation. Because clients are curious about this. Sometimes if you don’t ask them, you’re never going to know, but they’re probably very curious about estate planning. They’re probably very concerned they don’t have the documents in place. Even the ones that have the documents, they’re probably concerned that they need an update and they haven’t done it. So by doing this webinar, they feel more comfortable just going to the event. They know they’re not going to be the center of attention and then asking a question or hear people asking questions. Some of my most successful clients are actually using webinar as a lead generation to explain state planning. Louis Diamond: It’s a great idea. It’s like you’re empowering the advisor to talk more about estate planning. It’s no longer this bugaboo that was too complex or not in their swim lane. It’s empowering them to lead with, it sounds like. Rafael Loureiro: 100% Louis Diamond: Amazing. And last question, if you were an ambitious advisor building a new firm from scratch today, what would you tell them to focus on to create a more durable, harder to replicate future-proof business? Rafael Loureiro: That’s a great question because the factory floor of a hundred years ago, is no longer work. If you have a chance to start from the beginning, it’s a new world. It’s a new world for companies like ours. Even for companies like ours that are in the bleeding edge of technology, everything is changing with AI. How I organize my teams is changing with AI. So I would say select Wealth.com. No, that’s … I’m kidding. I’m kidding, but yes, I’ll say select the right tools, use AI properly, it’s no longer a headcount game. I’m not saying you’re not going to need help, you’re going to need help, but make sure the tools are talking to each other because it is a new age. It’s an agent about speed, about being able to offer more service quicker, about increasing the relationship, the intangibles, to your point. It’s no longer once a quarter call to your clients. So if I had the chance to do everything again, if I had a chance even to start Wealth.com again, it’s different how you organize your team in this age of AI. AI is going to be bigger than the industrial revolution. Trust me, the shockwave is huge. To your point earlier in this call, we’re getting a big jump every month. It’s no longer every year, every month there is something new coming from AI. So if you start your firm again, select the right partners, select the right tools and then hit the ground running. Louis Diamond: Perfect. That’s amazing. Rafael, this has been so fun. I learned a ton from you. You just have a way of storytelling and I absolutely love the why behind Wealth.com, the personal experience that probably a lot of listeners have had as the light bulb moment. And instead of just complaining about it, you actually took action and now are creating the future of estate planning, empowering advisors to offer estate planning to their clients, getting more folks in this country set up with trust and estates and wills, et cetera. So I think it’s amazing what you’re doing and I’m very excited to continue to watch your success. Rafael Loureiro: Thank you. Thank you for the opportunities and just to do a final plug, estate planning, tax planning, stay tuned. There is more coming. Louis Diamond: There we go. Thanks so much. Rafael Loureiro: Thank you. Mindy Diamond: As a financial advisor, you hold yourself to the highest standards of integrity, honesty, and credibility. You are successful because you take your professional responsibility seriously and are dedicated to your clients. But are you living your best business life? Are your goals aligned with your firms or could a better option exist? Should I Stay or Should I Go? is a book written with you in mind it’s a self-guided journey that walks you through the key steps that we take with our advisor clients. This strategic thought process and roadmap to professional self-discovery is designed to help you ask the right questions and think critically and objectively, whether you’re considering change or not. Learn how to get your copy at diamond-consultants.com/thebook. Why AI Matters Now: Filling the Estate Planning Gap with Wealth.com A conversation with Louis Diamond and Rafael Loureiro, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer at Wealth.com. Louis Diamond: Welcome to the latest episode of our podcast series for financial advisors. Today’s episode is Why AI Matters Now: Filling the Estate Planning Gap with Wealth.com. It’s a conversation with Rafael Loureiro, the firm’s Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer. I’m Louis Diamond and this is the Diamond Podcast for Financial Advisors. Mindy Diamond: At Diamond Consultants, we help elite advisors identify the right environment for their businesses to thrive, whether that’s at a wire house, boutique, or independent firm. With nearly three decades of experience, we’ve guided thousands of advisors and represented more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in assets transitioned, and each year, one in four advisors managing a billion dollars or more who change firms are our clients. Our process is education driven and based on building relationships, starting as your strategic partner well before you’re even thinking of a move. To schedule a confidential conversation, call us at 908-879-1002. Wondering why advisors change firms and where they’re headed? Are transition deals going up or down? Those very questions and more inspired us to create our annual Advisor Transition Report. It’s the award-winning data-driven resource designed for advisors that connects the dots between the motivations around movement and the firm’s appetite for top talent. Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to make smart decisions. Download your copy at diamond-consultants.com/transitionreport. Louis Diamond: In the wealth management world, estate planning has largely lived in a separate lane. It’s a topic advisors may raise with clients then hand off to an attorney and eventually a set of documents come back, filed away, rarely revisited, and often disconnected from the rest of the planning process. That structure has been in place for a long time and for the most part, it’s gotten unquestioned, but when you step back, it creates a gap between what do clients expect from their advisor and what actually gets delivered when it comes to estate planning. Rafael Loureiro, co-founder and CEO of Wealth.com, ran straight into the gap after a planning event of his own which should have been a coordinated process, felt fragmented, manual, and surprisingly opaque. And likewise, I recall the same type of disjointed experience in my own estate planning process. It’s experiences like these that became the starting point for building Wealth.com. What makes this story interesting isn’t just that they’re using AI but how they’re using it inside the estate planning process, and it’s how AI allows the model itself to change from a one-time legal event to something that evolves alongside the client, from static documents to a system that can actually interpret, update, and surface what matters, from a disconnected handoff to something the advisor can actively lead. In my conversation with Rafael, we get into how that plays out in practice, how tools like Ester move from summarizing estate documents to identifying gaps, to prompting next steps, and eventually preparing action on behalf of the advisor, because when AI moves from simply organizing information to helping drive decisions, estate planning stops being a periodic task and starts to look more like a continuous part of the advice process. So let’s dive in. Rafael, thank you for coming on our show today. Rafael Loureiro: My pleasure, Louis. Thank you for having me here. Louis Diamond: Of course. Let’s jump in and in researching you and speaking to you in the past, I got to admit, you had a very different path into the wealth management industry probably than anyone I’ve ever interviewed. So can you walk us through your background briefly and early professional endeavors? Rafael Loureiro: Absolutely. The accent that you hear is Brazilian. So I’ve been in the US for 25 years. I’m a software engineer by trade, came here as a HMB, been involved with different companies over the years and then most recently before Wealth.com. I was a chief technology officer with a fraud prevention company, nothing to do with wealth management, but by selling that company, it’s how the Wealth.com story started. Louis Diamond: Perfect. And I was referring to also some of your early career endeavors even before founding your last company, if you’re comfortable sharing that. Rafael Loureiro: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been involved with four different startups in different spaces. One of them was in, if you remember all the way back to 2008, the real estate prices, the first startup with foreclosures. So when houses went into foreclosures, me and my partner, we created a system to index that. I also had work on a photo album company. It became a lifetime business. It’s still running. I was the CTO and I did my share of consulting. I used to work for Accenture, Avanade, and then a home builder Fortune 500 companies. So I have a ton of experience in the technology space before Wealth.com. Louis Diamond: Perfect. And you mentioned the last business that you started that I believe sold to LexisNexis. Can you walk through what that business was? Rafael Loureiro: Yeah. So I did not start the business. I joined the business before Series A. The person that started the business, Rei Carvalho, he’s actually Wealth.com chairman. So the team is still together. The US, San Francisco, New York, offices in Sydney, Singapore, London. We serve clients like Coinbase, grew very fast and then got acquired by LexisNexis in 2020 during peak COVID. Think about, we literally signed the documents, popped the champagne on March 2020. No vaccine. Louis Diamond: Oh, my God. Rafael Loureiro: We literally popped the champagne and we all went back home to work from home because that was the guy that’s from LexisNexis. Through that experience, selling a company, one thing you usually do, it’s a big liquidity event and estate planning is always related to big moments. You get married, someone in your family die, you have a new kid, you have a liquidated event. So I work with a financial advisor. They’re amazing. They helped me with financial planning, wealth management, saved me a lot of money insurance. But when it was time to do the estate planning, Louis, my experience was, “Hey, Rafael, we always work with this lawyer, go talk to the lawyer.” And then it was a completely broken process. First, because it was COVID and I had to go see the lawyer face-to-face. That was weird right there. Second, because I was expecting the lawyer to know everything about me because my advisor knows everything about me, know about my life situation, know about liquid event, know about my kids, rental houses, everything and then the engineer. I know what I told the lawyer, but do I know for sure that everything I told the lawyer end up in the document? No, I don’t. Long story short, otherwise it is a long story, we’re having a virtual coffee. I don’t know if you remember everyone, big beard, long hair, everyone working from home, and then somehow all the Emailage C-level team and founders, the co-founders, we start complaining about state plan. Even another example, my chairman, the Wealth.com chairman, Emailage CEO, Rei Carvalho, he was like, “Hey, Rafael, I’m done with the summer heat in Arizona. I’m moving to Denver. I’m going for cooler weathers.” Literally the moment he moved to Denver, he gets a call from his estate planning lawyer, welcome him to Denver and saying, “Hey, we need to update your documents. “But I just spent thousands of dollars creating my documents.” “Yeah, but you live in a new state, you have to optimize your documents.” At that moment, Louis, we’re like, “Where there’s a problem, there is an opportunity,” and the company was born. Louis Diamond: I find the best company origin stories, it’s you have that, you have a personal experience or a moment where you have a realization that t

Episode 110: This week, Kyle Van Pelt talks with Kevin Knull, CEO of TaxStatus. With more than 30 years in financial services and fintech, Kevin has led growth and innovation at companies like MoneyGuidePro, YCharts, Symetra Financial, and Hartford Leaders. Throughout his career, he's been dedicated to advancing the industry by helping advisors deliver smarter, higher-quality advice to their clients. Kevin talks about how TaxStatus leverages access to IRS data to help financial advisors get a complete picture of a client's financial life. He explores the opportunities this presents for organic growth, building relationships with COIs, and providing better, more holistic advice. From his early days in the U.S. Coast Guard to leading FinTech and advisory firms, Kevin shares how his career has been fueled by one mission: delivering better advice and better outcomes. In this episode: (00:00) - Intro (02:01) - Kevin's money moment (04:42) - Why "better advice, better outcomes" is harder than it looks (06:15) - How tax data can serve as the foundation for holistic advice (09:27) - How TaxStatus can access clients' IRS data (11:13) - Consent, compliance, and how advisors can use IRS data responsibly (13:01) - Turning tax data into organic growth opportunities (16:20) - Partnering with CPAs and COIs through smarter data sharing (19:16) - The importance of a standardized process for data collection (24:28) - The role of AI in the future of the industry (31:22) - Kevin's Milemarker Minute Key Takeaways Advice is both an art and a science. Financial planning requires connecting multiple disciplines—tax, investments, estate planning, and risk management—rather than operating in silos. Start with the source of truth. The IRS holds the most complete financial picture of clients. Leveraging that data helps advisors deliver more accurate, holistic advice. Organic growth lives with existing clients. The fastest way to grow isn't always new leads. It's uncovering assets, businesses, and properties that clients already have but haven't disclosed. Data builds trust with COIs. CPAs, attorneys, and other professionals benefit from cleaner, real-time data. Advisors who bring value here strengthen partnerships and referrals. Quotes "There's science and there's art to this industry. And unfortunately, because the industry evolved, each discipline is operated separately." ~ Kevin Knull "The IRS is the source of truth. They have everything. So if you're going to render advice, that's the first place to start." ~ Kevin Knull "Financial planning, investment advice, and wealth management are art and science. Just like insurance and tax, there's a whole lot of gray. That gray is where firms, advisors, and professionals are going to differentiate themselves." ~ Kevin Knull Links  Kevin Knull on LinkedIn TaxStatus Envestnet | MoneyGuide Plaid Yodlee NAPFA Catch-22 Connect with our hosts Milemarker.co Kyle on LinkedIn Jud on LinkedIn Subscribe and stay in touch Apple Podcasts Spotify YouTube Produce game-changing content with Turncast Turncast helps your company grow by producing top-quality content and fostering transformative conversations. We specialize in content generation, podcasting, digital strategy, and audience growth for fintech and financial services companies. Learn more at Turncast.com.

They say you shouldn't sweat the small stuff, but that doesn't mean you can ignore the big stuff, either. When it comes to finances, and especially investing, it's important to get the big moves right. Mark Biller joins us today to go over the things that need special attention.Mark Biller is Executive Editor and Senior Portfolio Manager at Sound Mind Investing, an underwriter of Faith & Finance. Today, we'll cover some key takeaways from Sound Mind Investing's recent article, Getting the Big Moves Right, which explores seven critical investment decisions that can make or break your financial future.1. Have a Clear Investing PlanAs the old saying goes from the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, "If you don't know where you're going, it doesn't matter which way you go." A successful investment strategy starts with a plan—one that outlines:Your target retirement dateThe amount you hope to have saved by that dateThe steps needed to achieve that goalWithout an investment plan, it's easy to drift or make hasty decisions based on emotions or short-term market fluctuations.2. Commit to Investing ConsistentlyOne of the most significant factors in successful investing is how much you invest each month. While everyone's situation differs, investing 10–15% of your monthly income during your working years is a general rule of thumb.Your age, retirement timeline, and savings goals will influence this percentage, but the key is to make investing a consistent habit—not something you do only when you have extra cash.3. Get Your Asset Allocation RightThere's no such thing as a “perfect portfolio” that always wins in the market. Instead of chasing returns, focus on the right mix of investments for your:Time horizon (how long you have until retirement)Risk tolerance (your ability to withstand market fluctuations)At SMI (Sound Mind Investing), their members start with a risk tolerance quiz to determine the best balance between stocks and bonds. A well-diversified portfolio ensures that when one part of the market struggles, another part can provide stability.4. Choose Investments WiselyMany investors fall into the trap of buying stocks or funds based on hype or following the latest market trend. Instead, focus on:Process-driven investment strategies that guide decisions based on long-term goalsDiversification across asset classes to minimize riskAvoiding emotional investing based on fear or excitementRather than constantly adjusting your portfolio based on short-term news, stick to a disciplined investment approach that aligns with your financial plan.5. Measure Success with the Right BenchmarkToo many investors compare their portfolios to popular stock indexes like the S&P 500, but this can be misleading.If your portfolio contains more than just large U.S. stocks, using the S&P 500 as your benchmark may lead to unrealistic expectations. Instead, measure success based on:Your personal financial goalsThe average return needed to achieve those goalsIn other words, success isn't about “beating the market”—it's about making steady progress toward your investment objectives.6. Limit How Often You Check Your InvestmentsOne of the biggest emotional traps investors fall into is checking their portfolios too frequently.Daily monitoring can lead to panic-driven decisionsOvertrading increases costs and reduces long-term gainsMarket fluctuations are expected, and checking too often can create unnecessary stressAt SMI (Sound Mind Investing), they recommend checking investments monthly—or even quarterly—to maintain a long-term perspective.7. Stay Committed for the Long HaulMany investors struggle with "grass-is-greener" syndrome, constantly switching:Investment strategiesFinancial advisorsIndividual stocks and fundsWhile there are appropriate times to make changes, they happen far less frequently than most investors think. Choose your investment strategy carefully, then stick with it—even when market conditions fluctuate.What to Let Go of for Investment SuccessOnce you've nailed the big investment moves, free yourself from these distractions:Daily Market News—Most headlines are designed to create fear or hype, not provide useful long-term advice. The “What-If” Game—Don't waste time thinking about missed opportunities—focus on future decisions. Portfolio Micro-Management—Diversification means some investments will perform better than others at different times. Stay patient and trust your strategy.Investing isn't about perfection—it's about faithfulness and consistency. Here's how to ensure long-term success:Create an investment planStick to your strategyCommit to steady investingMonitor progress with the right benchmarksLimit emotional reactions to market noiseThe key to financial freedom isn't found in chasing quick gains—it's in making faithful, long-term decisions that align with wise stewardship principles. Above all, trust God as your ultimate provider. Investing is a tool for wise financial stewardship, but our true security is in Him—not in our portfolio's performance.To dive deeper into today's discussion, check out the full article Getting the Big Moves Right at SoundMindInvesting.org. Want personalized guidance? SMI (Sound Mind Investing) offers tools like the risk tolerance quiz and MoneyGuidePro to help investors stay on track.On Today's Program, Rob Answers Listener Questions:I have a $410,000 universal life insurance policy that I opened in 2020. I now have $30,000 in cash value built up. My children are grown and independent. What would be the best way for me to move that $30,000 somewhere else?My dad is starting to retire and has equity in his home. Would it be a good idea for him to take out a reverse mortgage to pay off his significant credit card debt so he can live comfortably in retirement? He still has a mortgage on the home.Resources Mentioned:Faithful Steward: FaithFi's New Quarterly MagazineGetting the Big Moves Right (Sound Mind Investing Article)Sound Mind Investing (SMI)Movement MortgageWisdom Over Wealth: 12 Lessons from Ecclesiastes on Money (Pre-Order)Look At The Sparrows: A 21-Day Devotional on Financial Fear and AnxietyRich Toward God: A Study on the Parable of the Rich FoolFind a Certified Kingdom Advisor (CKA) or Certified Christian Financial Counselor (CertCFC)FaithFi App Remember, you can call in to ask your questions most days at (800) 525-7000. Faith & Finance is also available on the Moody Radio Network and American Family Radio. Visit our website at FaithFi.com where you can join the FaithFi Community and give as we expand our outreach.

People tend to get caught up in numbers when planning their finances and lose sight of what's important. However, the goal of true wealth management is not just to have a plan but to have one based on values, priorities, and goals. It's about aligning your money with your values so that your finances reflect what's important to you. In this episode, Steve talks with Michael Thompson. Michael is the Senior Wealth Advisor at Copper Leaf Financial with more than 25 years of experience helping clients achieve their financial goals. Also serving as a partner at Copper Leaf Financial, Michael is the steward and director of the planning process, driving strategy, bringing together expertise, and delivering true, comprehensive planning and wealth management. Michael's areas of expertise are evidence-based and sustainable investing, retiree transitions, and complex estate and philanthropic planning.  Michael talks with Steve about how he partnered with a 35-year-old CPA firm to help them take the next step in helping their clients get what they call true wealth management, their planning process, and how his past career prepared him to take on the challenge of launching Copper Leaf Financial to reach the success they've had to date.   Key Takeaways [01:42] - An overview of how Copper Leaf Financial serves its clients.  [03:32] - The reasons behind Copper Leaf Financial's founding. [07:35] - What made Michael the right person to launch Copper Leaf Financial. [13:20] - What true wealth management means. [15:02] - The challenges of partnering with an already successful accounting firm. [18:34] - What it's like to be a CPA and wealth manager. [20:21] - How Michael and his team run their CPA and wealth management firm. [22:49] - What the deliverables of a CPA and financial planning firm look like. [26:09] - How Michael integrated eMoney and MoneyGuidePro into their business process. [27:25] - Copper Leaf Financial's onboarding process. [33:24] - How Michael stays on top of the wealth management industry.   Quotes [08:26] - "I grew up in a world where financial planning is all about not just having a plan but implementing and managing that plan through time." ~ Michael Thompson [14:15] - "True wealth management is about aligning the money to live the life people want and helping them achieve that level of fulfillment and contentment." ~ Michael Thompson [29:52] - "We never get pushback anymore. I always tell people that if there's a pushback, it's in our brain or the advisor's brain and not the client's brain. If we tell clients the reason we charge, that makes sense for clients and certainly makes sense for us." ~ Michael Thompson   Links  Michael Thompson on LinkedIn Copper Leaf Financial John Davis Bret Hodgdon Davis & Hodgdon CPAs Brian Portnoy MoneyGuidePro eMoney Advisor   Connect with our hosts Steve on LinkedIn Buckingham Strategic Partners   Subscribe and stay in touch Apple Podcasts Spotify Steve on LinkedIn Follow Buckingham Strategic Partners  on Twitter   Disclosure For informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as specific investment, accounting, legal, or tax advice. Certain information is based upon third-party data which may become outdated or otherwise superseded without notice. Third-party information is deemed to be reliable, but its accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed. Some analysis presented is based off current economic information and may become outdated or irrelevant without notice. Individuals should speak with their qualified financial professionals based on his or her unique circumstances. Neither the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) nor any other federal or state agency have approved, determined the accuracy, or confirmed the adequacy of this podcast. © 2022 Buckingham Wealth Partners, LLC. Buckingham Strategic Wealth, LLC and Buckingham Strategic Partners, LLC (collectively, Buckingham Wealth Partners)

RightCapital or MoneyGuideProWhy BayRock switched to RightCapital from MoneyGuidePro.RightCapital has (almost) everything MoneyGuidePro has and RightCapital has a few features that MoneyGuidePro is missing. BothRightCapital and MoneyGuidePro are fantastic tools for Financial Planning, for Certified Financial Planner™ Professionals, and for clients managing wealth. So, why did I switch to RightCapital from MoneyGuidePro?Why Buy RightCapitalRightCapital helps BayRock Deliver Smarter Strategies and Better Results. As a CFP® Professional, I needed solutions, not obstacles. While MoneyGuidePro was a great tool, the version we used at Morgan Stanley was bogged down with all kinds of added junk required by the Big Bank on Wall Street. When I became and Independent Fidcuciary, I wanted my company - BayRock Financial - to have the best tools in the wealth management business. I absolutely believe that and that every family needs and deserves a quality financial plan. RightCapital off the shelf allows me to deliver Smarter Strategies and Better Results - at a lower cost than MoneyGuidePro. RightCapital Offers:A lower cost of ownership. MoneyGuidePro requires add-on fees for account aggregations, business intelligence, and client marketing materials, which are all included in RightCapital Premium. A simple 6-step client onboarding. RightCapital doesn't require extensive data entry to get started. Just enter the basic financial data you need for a specific analysis such as retirement, insurance needs, or social security optimization. Goal-based AND cash flow-based planning options. Toggle between either goal- or cash flow-based planning approach depending on your client's needs or your preference. Watch Video

What is the “real value” that financial advisors deliver and that clients are willing to pay for? The value delivered by financial advisors has morphed over time. Decades ago, it was picking stocks and facilitating transactions. Then asset allocation and money management came into vogue. In the past 15 years, financial planning has become popular in parallel with the rise of financial planning software such as MoneyGuidePro, eMoney, and NaviPlan. Underlying this has been the accelerating pace of technology change as smartphones make the non-behavioral aspects of saving and managing money as simple as a few screen taps. Today, average financial advisors who remain wedded to the way they've been doing business will soon find themselves perfectly suited for a world that no longer exists. They'll be chased out of business by prospects who never became clients, by clients who left to work with advisors better-suited to their evolving needs. Just like smartphones replaced laptops, and laptops replaced desktops, the value delivered by financial advisors is shifting from being “all about the money” to a focus on helping clients align their money behavior with their life satisfaction. In this world, money is simply a tool. And the advisor's role is to smartly manage the money and collaboratively guide the client's behavior so they can live their best life possible with the money they have. In this world, advisors who remain focused on the “mechanics” of money will be replaced by advisors who focus on the “alignment” of money.

This blog, video, and podcast are about financial planning software that can help determine how much you need to retire, how much you can spend in retirement, will you have enough for long term care or would insurance be better, etc. See our Video Here. We have been doing retirement calculations with spreadsheets – and decided this year to subscribe to a service to give us another way to look at retirement and spending with clients. This makes the client experience consistent and quality financial plans possible on a large scale. It increases your efficiency and enables you to add value to the planning process based on your experience, knowledge and relationship. simplify client driven data gathering. Select a conversation and send a link to your client for them to input their data. This streamlined process gets needed information directly into the plan. Also explore clients' expectations, concerns and goals to drive your advice and enhance the quality of your financial plan. Health care costs are one of your clients' largest expenses in retirement. Our Health Care Smart Goal calculates Medicare Part B, Part D, Out of Pocket Expenses and Medigap specific to your client's modified adjusted gross income. The health care expense schedule also provides real future health care costs. This feature auto calculates multiple social security options to help identify the strategy that makes the most sense for your client. First year income, lifetime income, break-even points and plan probabilities of success will help educate your client. The selected strategy will then be incorporated into the financial plan. Explore loss tolerance and longevity in the risk feature. Couples can input separate loss tolerances and define an agreeable household number. Their sanity check allows your clients' to evaluate their response to losses. The Risk / Return output allows clients to determine if they are comfortable with their plan. Four ways to solve your clients' financial plan: Choices, Play Zone®, What If and SuperSolve®. Each of these options allows you and your client to vary elements of their financial plan that gets them into their Confidence Zone. From logical tradeoffs, to focusing on wishes and desired retirement age, this feature helps you provide advice for your client to achieve their retirement goals. Play Zone® allows the client to adjust variables they can control, such as retirement age and lifestyle, see their impact and understand tradeoffs necessary to achieve their goals. Put the mouse in your clients' hands and allow them to experience the impact of different retirement scenarios. What Are You Afraid Of focuses on plan variables that your client cannot control. It allows them to see the impact of market or social security changes, inflation, plan returns, long-term care needs, and other unexpected costs. Concerns identified through this feature are highlighted in the Discovery Process, reminding you to address them The Client Planning Portal helps clients focus on what's most important and whether their plan is still on track. The Probability of Success Meter reminds clients of their current plan results and measures their confidence in achieving their goals.

Nearly two million financial plans were created in the last year using MoneyGuidePro®. The two individuals who are charged with overseeing the success of the acquisition of PIEtech®, the parent company of MoneyGuidePro®, discuss what that means for their clients.

Family Wealth Builder of Houston has decided to do something we've never done before. We're calling it Family Wealth Bootcamp, and we’re promoting it with  a Year Long Giveaway. That's right, we're going to be giving away an entire year of Family Wealth Bootcamp complete with tips, tools, and strategies. We’re giving away an all inclusive Premium Membership valued at $2500 — for free. But wait, it gets even better! Just by entering the drawing you'll get immediate access to three incredible bonuses which I'll tell you about in just a sec.    Since obviously, one of you can win our Premium Membership Package, I want to make sure you have the opportunity to enter now by signing up at FamilyWealthBootcamp.com.   So, here's how works, simply sign up at FamilyWealthBootcamp.com and you'll instantly be entered into our Family Wealth Bootcamp Year Long Giveaway where the winner will receive a 100% completely free year of our premium membership package valued at over $2500 — plus, when you sign up right now, you'll instantly receive these 4 incredible bonuses.    Family Wealth Bootcamp will get you started for a $6 investment. We offer no money back guarantee. All sales are final.   This is a special limited offer open to the next 100 people who sign up at FamilyWealthBootcamp.com   For 6 Bucks, you get this Big Bonus Bundle which includes:   Bonus #1: Special Limited Hard Cover Edition of Jim’s Book Make Your Money Count for Individual Investors, or What Matters Most for Financial Advisors   Bonus #2: The Blueprint for Financial Success, our proprietary financial planning tool for individual investors, families, and business owners. (Also our signature training tool for Financial Advisors).    Bonus #3:  Private Planning Portal We believe every family deserves a quality financial plan, and every plan starts with The Blueprint for Financial Success. The Private Planning Portal is provided by our Technology partner Pie Tech, makers of MoneyGuidePro, our financial planning tool of choice.   Bonus #4: RiskAlyze Investment management is an important part of every financial plan. Managing risk and opportunity is made easy with RiskAlyze. You’ll start with your Risk Number and then we’ll help you align your investments with your own Risk level so that you’re always invested right. Before you complete Family Wealth Bootcamp, you’ll become a Fearless Investor.   All that for a one time investment of $6. Basically, we’re giving you everything for the shipping and handling cost of the book. Again, if you’re an individual investor, family, or business owner, Make Your Money Count is our recommended place to start. You pay the $6 and we’ll get your order out in the mail. Europe and Canada will have a higher shipping cost so if you’re outside the continental USA, send me an email and we’ll figure out the cost to send the special limited hard cover edition of the book along a full-size copy of The Blueprint for Financial Success to your front door. And, if your Financial Advisor is one of those 99.9% of Financial Advisors who sell some form of financial planning, but has never hired a financial planner and doesn’t have an actual financial plan for themselves, make sure you tell them about Family Wealth Bootcamp. What Matters Most is the book we recommend for Financial Advisors and they get the same deal. For $6 they get all of the bonuses listed above, a special limited hard cover edition of What Matters Most along with a full-sized copy of The Blueprint for Financial Success — delivered to their doorstep. Again, if you’re outside the continental USA, please email Jim@FamilyWealthBuilder.com and we’ll figure out the shipping cost.

The post MoneyGuidePro – Retirement Planning appeared first on Fee Only Fiduciary Financial Planners, Retirement Planning, Socially Responsible Investing, Tucson & US.

The post MoneyGuidePro – Retirement Planning appeared first on Fee Only Fiduciary Financial Planners, Retirement Planning, Socially Responsible Investing, Tucson & US.

The post MoneyGuidePro – Retirement Planning appeared first on Fee Only Fiduciary Financial Planners, Retirement Planning, Socially Responsible Investing, Tucson & US.

The post MoneyGuidePro – Retirement Planning appeared first on AIO Financial Advisors Fee Only Fiduciary.

If you are in the “inform” business, and not the “transform” business, you won’t be long for this business. Technology services are quickly chipping away at the value-stack financial advisors offer to clients. There may come a time when, “I turn on my phone and I say, ‘Hi, Alexa. Tell me what my bank account is today. Transfer $10,000 from Bank A to Bank B. Open a 529 plan for my kid. Then, rebalance my brokerage account.’ And tell me how I'm doing against my goal of buying this house,” said Lex Sokolin, Global Director of Fintech Strategy and Partner at Autonomous. In this near future world, you won’t need MoneyGuidePro, e-Money, or Advicent. Instead, “You have a more modern architecture, so you don't have a UI. You might have APIs that allow machines to talk to each other. Then, you can plug that into all sorts of chatbots for conversational interfaces,” said Lex. Lex isn’t describing some crazy sci-fi dystopia. Rapid advancements in AI, algorithms, chatbots and a host of other technologies is bringing planning services to your favorite digital friend faster than you may think. And if Amazon, Google or some other behemoth decides to get into our business in a big way, well, you can forget about competing by using technology as a differentiator. There is only one ultimate differentiator; it is your ability to help transform people’s lives.

On this week’s Hanson McClain’s Money Matters: Scott and Pat take a call about converting rental property income to mortgage-backed securities. They then talk to a state worker looking to retire in the next few years, who wonders if she should invest more aggressively with assets she won’t immediately need. Finally, a discussion with financial industry thought leaderleader Kevin Knull, president of PIEtech and creator of MoneyGuidePro, the industry’s leading financial planning software. If you have a question for Scott or Pat, you can call 1-888-2-HANSON (1-888-242-6766), or you can also submit a question at questions@moneymatters.comat any time to be featured on a future show. Scott Hanson and Pat McClain have been hosting Hanson McClain’s Money Matters radio show for over 20 years, and have answered questions from thousands of callers on a variety of financial topics.

How would you answer these three questions about exploring advice? What is the definition of good advice? What is the definition of a quality financial plan? What does it mean to be a fiduciary? Kevin Knull, the president of PIEtechSM, Inc., (parent company of MoneyGuidePro financial planning software) asked those three questions to an audience of financial and wealth management leaders and basically got blank stares in response. Dismayed, he decided to reach out to thought leaders and experts around the country to get their answers. He collected their thoughts and published them in a remarkable new book called, Exploring Advice: What You Need to Know About Good Financial Advice, a Quality Financial Plan and the Role of a Fiduciary. I was one of the 36 leaders who contributed a chapter to the book. In today's show, I'm joined by Kevin Knull and two other contributors to the book, Tricia Rothschild, Head of Global Advisor and Wealth Management Solutions for Morningstar, and Frank McAleer, Director, Retirement Solutions for Raymond James. We discuss these three questions and point the way toward how you can add value in an increasingly commoditized industry.

On today’s broadcast, Redtail is the beneficiary of two announcements, MoneyGuidePro releases G4, and see the latest audio and video solutions to enhance your online content So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now! (WatchFPPad Bits and Bytes on YouTube) Today’s episode is brought to you by Kaleido, introducing their new flexible marketing services […]

I met with Bob Curtis, CEO of PIETech (providers of MoneyGuidePro software), between sessions at T3 Enterprise 2015 to dive into the details of what he discussed during his general session presentation at the conference. MoneyGuidePro conducted one of the most unconventional presentations at the T3 Enterprise Conference, inspired by sketches from Monty Python and […]