Wealthtech firms target stock pay, pensions and heirs for advisors

Wealthtech providers are building tools to keep financial advisors involved in client decisions that happen outside the portfolio review. These range from paying for college to cashing out employer stock to whether heirs stay with the family’s advisor.

Income Lab, Grantd and Healthspan Wealth have each added capabilities aimed at the points where a registered investment advisor, or RIA, is most likely to lose a client or the assets tied to the relationship.

Income Lab moves earlier in the life cycle

Income Lab, known for software that tells retirees how much they can spend, is pushing its planning into the decades before retirement. The company argues that choices made in a client’s working years, from college savings to Roth conversions, shape the income available later.

A new college funding planner weighs actual school costs, current savings, expected grants and borrowing. It shows a family’s shortfall alongside its other goals. A companion tool estimates the Student Aid Index, the federal formula that determines eligibility for need-based aid.

For clients nearing retirement, a preretirement planner compares 25 combinations of retirement dates and savings levels, measured by what the household could spend. A tool called FIRE Lab compares up to seven paths to early financial independence. The software can also map a client’s move from employer health coverage to the Affordable Care Act marketplace and then to Medicare.

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A new pension option analyzer compares a lump sum with lifetime pension income under different life expectancies. Plans can also apply the Rule of 55, which lets workers who leave a job in or after the year they turn 55 tap that employer’s plan without an early-withdrawal penalty. When a client stops working, the software can automatically add an appeal of Medicare’s income-related premium surcharge if the appeal helps.

Penny, the company’s AI paraplanner, now analyzes tax returns. It also helps with estate decisions such as beneficiary allocations and gifting.

“We became known for helping advisors answer a key question: How much can I spend in retirement?” said Justin Fitzpatrick, Income Lab’s president and co-founder. “But clients have important questions long before they retire, and those decisions affect one another.”

The college, student aid, FIRE, pension and estate tools are available only in Income Lab Pro, the company’s higher-priced tier.

Equity pay planning comes to Vanguard advisors

Grantd, the Denver-based equity compensation startup, said select Vanguard advisors are using its AI platform to analyze stock awards at private, pre-IPO and public companies. The service covers workplace plan participants who choose to share the data, extending Grantd’s push to make equity compensation a core part of advice.

The software reads grant and vesting documents from any provider and models the tax effects. These include alternative minimum tax exposure, withholding on restricted stock units and 83(b) elections, which let employees pay tax on restricted stock when it’s granted rather than when it vests. A proprietary score flags concentration risk and timing.

“More companies are now providing time-based, full-value equity compensation to employees at all levels,” said Amber Brestowski, head of participant financial success at Vanguard Workplace Solutions.

In a 2025 Schwab survey of stock plan participants, half agreed that equity compensation is a critical tool to reach their retirement goals, and three-quarters called it "very important" when evaluating new job opportunities.

Grantd has previously drawn backing from Edward Jones Ventures, TIFIN Studios and Dynasty Financial Partners.

Healthspan Wealth takes on the heir problem

Healthspan Wealth, the newly launched fintech platform that ties health planning to wealth planning, built its Leaky Bucket AUM Risk Score for RIAs, trust companies, aggregators and private equity-owned firms. The score measures how much of a firm’s revenue depends on clients and advisors past a set age who have no identified, engaged successor.

The 100-point index scores 24 variables across four weighted themes: relationship breadth and depth, planning breadth and depth, exclusivity and demographics. Firms first break down revenue by client age and how it is spread among advisors and successors. They then map which heirs will make decisions and where revenue has no link to the next generation.

Advisors are then steered toward planning conversations with younger family members about health care costs, caregiving and household decisions. Meanwhile, firms track progress on identifying and engaging successors.

Cerulli Associates has found that RIAs lose an average of 2% to 5% of assets a year to attrition. Separately, a Natixis Investment Managers report found nearly half of US investors expecting an inheritance don’t plan to keep their benefactor’s advisor.

Read more: The key to attracting and retaining the next generation of advisors? Client-focused training

“Firms can see the assets they manage today. The harder question is which relationships will carry those assets into the next generation,” said Thomas C. West, Healthspan Wealth’s co-founder and CEO.

“Families often decide whom they trust during the moments when they need the most help,” said Suzanne Schmitt, the firm’s co-founder and COO.

The underlying platform remains in early access with a limited number of firms.