Advisory firms all need certain core technology systems to run their businesses. The standard three core systems tend to be portfolio management, financial planning software, and CRM, since most advisory firms offer portfolio management requiring a layer of rebalancing, performance reporting, and billing; do financial planning that requires a projection engine and planning deliverables; and need a system of record to house data on clients and their relationship history with the advisor. But beyond those three core categories, which tend to see near-universal adoption among advisors, the market gets much more fragmented as advisory firms diverge from one another once you start to drill down past their basic functions. Different firms have different planning niches, client service models, investment philosophies, business development strategies, and operational workflows, and the technology that they use for each of those functions varies in kind. Hence, while general comprehensive planning software like RightCapital, eMoney, and MoneyGuide has a cumulative 95% adoption rate per our most recent Kitces Research on Advisor Technology, more specialized planning tools tend to see significantly lower adoption: From tax planning, retirement, and cash flow monitoring on the high end with adoption rates from roughly 50%–75% down to legacy planning, healthcare/Medicare planning, student loan planning, and business valuation tools on the low end with adoption rates below 20%.
This is why most specialized financial planning tools tend to exist on a standalone basis, even as much of the rest of the AdvisorTech landscape tends to consolidate towards all-in-one tools. The high amount of subject matter expertise needed to program the software to accurately perform complex planning calculation, plus the attention to user experience that's needed to clearly illustrate complex planning concepts to clients, makes it difficult to build a specialized planning tool that works well in one planning category, let alone one that spans multiple categories. And the fragmentation of specialized planning approaches among advisors can make it difficult to scale distribution by bundling or cross-selling tools (e.g., the advisor who specializes in estate planning isn't necessarily going to also need a student loan planning tool). With a few rare exceptions – e.g., Holistiplan and FP Alpha both offering modules for tax, estate, and property and casualty insurance review – it's made better business sense for most specialized planning tools to stick to one niche and put their development resources towards going deeper rather than broader in their planning capabilities.
And so it's notable this month that the specialized planning technology platform Wealth.com has announced a whopping $65 million Series B funding round led by Charles Schwab, which per its press release will be used both to accelerate the development of its Ester AI engine and to fund strategic acquisitions. In other words, Wealth.com is planning to double down on AI to facilitate specialized planning, and to potentially expand via acquisition into other planning areas where it can leverage its AI capabilities.
Wealth.com's roots, of course, were as a standalone estate planning solution (primarily for estate planning document creation with an added planning layer) which leaned heavily into AI for estate document extraction and analysis. Earlier this year, Wealth.com added a new planning domain with its tax planning tool (which is offered either as a separate standalone tool or bundled with estate planning) – which made a certain amount of sense, as there is potentially a bigger market among advisors for tax planning tools than for estate planning given that tax planning opportunities can often crop up every single year whereas a client may only need a new set of estate documents once every 10-15 years. The caveat, though, is that the market for tax planning is already dominated by a popular incumbent in Holistiplan – but with some advisors potentially in the mood to explore new options following Holistiplan's price restructuring in the last year (and others who are either new firms or existing ones that didn't already have a tax planning solution), now could be a rare opportunity for Wealth.com to chip away at some of Holistiplan's entrenched market share.
But the question going forward is, if Wealth.com plans to use its fresh Series B funding to make acquisitions to expand the breadth of its technology, which direction will it go in? It could follow the example of Holistiplan and FP Alpha and add a property and casualty insurance module – but although that may make some sense from a technology standpoint (as it can leverage the same document extraction technology that has proven effective for scanning estate and tax documents to automatically read and analyze insurance declarations), the unfortunate reality is that few advisors really consider property and casualty insurance to be a high-value client conversation (other than in the UHNW space where the needs get exponentially more complex for insuring various types of personal, business, and trust assets).
If Wealth.com wanted to expand into an area with deeper and higher-value planning needs, it could consider tackling equity compensation, where an increase in advisors drawn into the equity compensation niche and its combination of high-income clients and complex planning needs has led to a small pop of new competition with firms like Trayecto, Gemifi, and Grantd, and EquityNav. Or it could aim for the Social Security and retirement income planning space, which has a relatively high overall adoption rate among advisors but unlike the tax planning space has no one dominant Holistiplan-like incumbent. Wealth.com could even expand outside of specialized planning entirely build out its own comprehensive planning tool to compete with eMoney, RightCapital, or MoneyGuide, or acquire a startup CRM like Slant to add an operational dimension for advisors giving advice through the Wealth.com platform and integrate that advice more smoothly into the client relationship.
For now, though, what's clear is that Wealth.com has aspirations of taking over a much bigger chunk of financial planning beyond its estate planning roots, with the expansion into tax being just the beginning. And so going forward, the challenge for the platform will be how to overcome the difficulties of building, scaling, and distributing specialized planning software which will be used in different ways by different segments of advisors for different client types – i.e., the reason that most specialized planning tools have remained as standalone offerings up until now. Whatever the likelihood of succeeding, Wealth.com's leaders have the ambition – and now the funding – to try.
This article first appeared on the Nerd’s Eye View at Kitces.com at https://kitc.es/advisortech-may2026, and has been reprinted here with permission.
Ben Henry-Moreland is a Senior Financial Planning Nerd at Kitces.com, where he specializes in writing and speaking on financial planning topics including tax, practice management, and technology. He also co-authors the monthly Kitces #AdvisorTech column. Drawing from his experience as a financial planner and a solo advisory firm owner, Ben is passionate about fulfilling the site’s mission of making financial advicers better and more successful.
Michael Kitces is Head of Planning Strategy at Focus Partners Wealth, which provides an evidence-based approach to private wealth management for near- and current retirees, and Focus Partners Advisor Solutions, a turnkey wealth management services provider supporting thousands of independent financial advisors through the scaling phase of growth.
In addition, he is a co-founder of the XY Planning Network, AdvicePay, fpPathfinder, and New Planner Recruiting, the former Practitioner Editor of the Journal of Financial Planning, the host of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, and the publisher of the popular financial planning industry blog Nerd’s Eye View through his website Kitces.com, dedicated to advancing knowledge in financial planning. In 2010, Michael was recognized with one of the FPA’s “Heart of Financial Planning” awards for his dedication and work in advancing the profession.
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