Wealth.com, Vestwell, and Vanilla have announced separate updates aimed at expanding estate planning and workplace retirement services for financial advisors, underscoring a growing trend toward integrated, scalable solutions in the RIA space.
Wealth.com has been selected as the exclusive estate planning partner for OneDigital, a strategic advisory firm offering insurance, wealth management, and employee benefits to small and mid-sized businesses.
As part of the collaboration, OneDigital’s advisors now have access to Wealth.com’s digital estate planning platform, including tools powered by Ester, an AI engine developed specifically for estate workflows.
Wealth.com says the integration enables advisors to help clients create and manage estate documents at lower cost than traditional legal channels, bringing estate planning further into the core of the advisory relationship.
“Estate planning has traditionally been out of reach for many – overly complex, expensive and siloed,” Tim White, co-founder and chief growth officer at Wealth.com, said in the partnership announcement. “We’ve built a modern, accessible solution ... With OneDigital’s scale and advisor relationships, we’re excited to bring that experience to more families across the country.”
Founded in 2021, Wealth.com raised $30 million in Series A funding last year and now supports more than 1,000 wealth management firms across the country.
Vestwell has also broadened its partnership network through a new relationship with Savvy Wealth, aimed at enabling Savvy’s affiliated RIA, Savvy Advisors, to offer 401(k) plan services to small-business clients. Advisors can act as 3(38) fiduciaries and investment managers under a white-labeled system integrated with Vestwell’s retirement platform.
The combined solution allows for automated plan administration, integrated billing, and connection to payroll and HR systems. Savvy expects plan sizes to range from $2 million to $15 million – positioning the service as an option for businesses traditionally overlooked by large retirement providers.
“We’re committed to delivering customized solutions that help businesses manage their savings plans more effectively,” Aaron Schumm, founder and chief executive officer at Vestwell, said in a statement.
With small-business formation rebounding and retirement coverage gaps still persistent, the partnership reflects broader industry efforts to address employer plan needs with more adaptable platforms.
Meanwhile, Vanilla has rolled out an upgraded suite of AI features under its V/AI platform, aiming to accelerate estate planning analysis and reduce manual workloads for advisors.
The moves follow its late January launch of an AI copilot to help accelerate the planning process for advisors.
Its latest set of enhancements includes V/AI estate summaries, a custom prompt extender, and provision notes extraction functions for substrusts.
It also unveiled a customizable prompt interface for trust companies, an auto-population capability to update client profiles with data drawn directly from estate documents and a chat interface that can handle questions ranging from simple role identification to complex clause conflicts.
With those tools, the firm said advisors will be able to interpret entire sets of estate planning documents together – rather than in isolation – while surfacing opportunities for strategic planning.
In beta testing, the fintech provider said advisors using the platform produced over 3,500 document summaries and more than 300 full estate plan summaries.
“Our vision was always to make estate planning feel intuitive and immediate. ... by continually refining our AI with feedback from top advisory firms, we’ve created a system that delivers value on day one,” said Amjad Hussain, chief technology officer at Vanilla.
Choice anxiety, prestige bias, and the temptation to make selections based on outsourced confidence are just some of the parallels between investing and the world of wine tasting.
Regulators found Bank of America's monitoring software had a known flaw Merrill left uncorrected for years.
While AI has become a go-to research tool for affluent investors, new HSBC research suggests human advisors remain the deciding voice when investment decisions are made.
A 5-4 ruling preserves the Federal Reserve's independence for now, but the legal fight over presidential removal power is far from settled.
For years, large firms have been facing penalties and questions from regulators over interest rates for clients’ cash accounts.
Dan Biagini of American Equity says the steady decline of pensions, longer lifespans and a reset in interest rates are rewriting how advisors build retirement income
Direct indexing is on pace to outgrow ETFs and mutual funds. Northern Trust's Ken Lassner explains why the advisors who get it wish they had started sooner.
