FP Alpha and wealth.com reveal souped-up planning capabilities

FP Alpha and wealth.com, two leading providers in the wealth tech space, have announced pivotal enhancements to help boost financial advisors' tax planning and estate planning capabilities.

FP Alpha levels up tax planning

FP Alpha unveiled NextGen Tax Insights, an artificial intelligence-based tool designed to provide financial advisors with personalized, actionable tax planning recommendations.

The feature, introduced at this week's T3 Conference in Texas, expands FP Alpha’s existing tax capabilities and is available both as part of its broader platform and as a standalone offering under FP Alpha TAX.

FP Alpha announced the decision to unbundle its tax solution from its broader planning suite in January.

Andrew Altfest, founder and CEO of FP Alpha, said the update "[sets] a new standard for AI-powered tax planning.

“This tool enables advisors to provide their clients with data-driven actionable tax insights, securely, based on each client’s specific scenarios; elevating their role as trusted financial professionals,” Altfest said in a statement on Tuesday.

FP Alpha's newest tax capability analyzes client data – including income, assets, and tax documents – to unearth tailored tax-saving opportunities. The fintech provider added that its AI has been trained using data from the IRS, as well as CFPs and CPAs, to ensure accuracy and relevance. Advisors also have the option to disable the feature, depending on firm preferences.

To complement its tax planning updates, FP Alpha introduced new settings to give enterprise clients enhanced control over and insights user roles, access permissions, and data usage on the platform. 

Wealth.com debuts estate planning scenarios tool

Meanwhile, wealth.com launched Scenario Builder, an estate planning tool designed to help financial advisors, estate attorneys, and wealth planners model and compare complex estate strategies in real time. The tool provides automated calculations of estate tax implications and enables users to adjust key assumptions, such as growth rates and tax exemptions, to assess different planning scenarios.

“For high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth families, even a single misstep can lead to millions lost in wealth,” said Danny Lohrfink, co-founder and chief product officer at wealth.com. “With this technology, advisors and attorneys can guide clients through complex estate planning with greater precision, clarity, and confidence than ever before.”

Scenario Builder integrates various estate planning techniques, including grantor retained annuity trusts, spousal lifetime access trusts, irrevocable life insurance trusts, and charitable lead annuity trusts. Advisors can compare multiple estate strategies side by side and factor in potential future financial events, such as asset sales or charitable contributions, to better understand their long-term impact.

It's worth noting that wealth.com isn't the first estate planning tech platform to market with a scenario visualization feature. Last year, Vanilla revealed its own estate planning scenarios tool to game out how GRATs, SLATs, and ILITs.

“Advisors shouldn’t have to rely on back-of-the-napkin math or complicated spreadsheets to show clients the impact of an estate planning decision,” Lohrfink said, highlighting the opportunity to "strengthen client relationships ... as indispensable partners in wealth preservation.”

Wealth.com, which serves more than 750 wealth management firms, recently appointed Kathy Wunderli as head of private wealth, a move aimed at expanding its capabilities in the high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth advisory space.