AfterSteps helps advisers handle post-death tracking of accounts

AfterSteps Inc. has the potential one day soon to plug in to financial advisers’ practices as an outsourced provider.

The adviser version of the online platform will help with an often-touchy task: post-death tracking of a client’s accounts and assets.

The platform’s approach is very straightforward and utilitarian. It leads clients through the process of gathering up all their financial accounts, insurance and related information and putting it into a single online tool for use by their heirs.

Part of what makes it appealing is its potential for bridging the gap between advisers and children of clients that sometimes exists these days.

In addition to helping clients and their families keep track of this information, the platform will assist advisers in a number of ways.

Not only will it provide a means by which clients themselves can aggregate and enter all the requisite data on their various accounts, insurance policies and other information, but it could, in theory, provide a more natural starting point for an adviser to broach the subject of managing held-away assets.

A trying time

These benefits add to AfterSteps founder and chief executive Jessica Bloomgarden’s original intent: smoothing what is already a trying time for a surviving spouse, children or other family members.

InvestmentNews has cited various surveys indicating how flat-out unhappy many adult children are with their parents’ adviser.

And though they don’t agree on specific amounts, many different researchers and institutions have projected that trillions of dollars of inherited assets are going to be passed from baby boomer parents to their offspring. That yet-to-come transition provides perfect timing for the efforts of AfterSteps, which remains in a pilot stage with consumers and a handful of advisers.

“I lost a grandparent during my time at Harvard and directly experienced the problems that can occur, including trying to identify and find accounts, and information related to them,” Ms. Bloomgarden said. “That experience is why AfterSteps started off as more of a consumer-facing solution.”

Ms. Bloomgarden started work on the service in 2011 while completing her MBA at Harvard Business School.

During the development process, she sought input from various professionals, including advisers, who contend with these issues.

“Financial advisers and estate attorneys got excited, as it is a very natural fit for many of them in their own work,” Ms. Bloomgarden said.

And though it is true that many of the best advisers tell me that they end up with a holistic knowledge about their clients’ financial lives as a matter of course, many, especially younger advisers, are often at a loss about how best to inquire about other types of accounts.

The best customer relationship management systems have features built into them for reminding advisers to contact their clients and for collecting additional details and account information. Although for many firms, especially those with dedicated client managers or paraplanners, features within CRM systems might meet the need AfterSteps seeks to fulfill, I suspect that many solo practitioners will welcome a service such as this, which is more automated and largely client-driven.

“Our software will provide advisers with a value-added service that could help them better engage and retain their clients — and their clients’ families,” Ms. Bloomgarden said.

For now, in addition to the post-death-management aspect, the service maintains an up-to-date client profile and lets the adviser set up periodic continuing reviews and checkups, and set monitoring and alerts for life changes. Those can be configured to alert or remind the adviser to bring up the need for some other service, such as insurance or long-term-care planning.

Advisers even have the ability to add their clients to the system and have AfterSteps generate a co-branded e-mail reminder.

A major way in which the adviser-focused version of the product differs from what is marketed to consumers is that each adviser receives a database for all of his or her clients.

Ms. Bloomgarden has many additional ideas and already has begun the process of working toward an integration with one of the four major custodians.

Although she is planning for a September or October launch into official beta, she has worked out the cost as $150 per month per adviser or $1,500 for an annual license for use with an unlimited number of clients.

For advisers who might prefer to test it out on a per-client basis, Ms. Bloomgarden has tentatively priced this at $60 per year per client.

Longtime readers might recall that I wrote about another service from startup Knowtification Inc. back in 2010.

Unlike AfterSteps, that service tried to track down and identify lost relatives’ accounts after their death by querying numerous insurance and financial services companies and trying to match their name and identifiers with existing accounts. That service no longer appears to be active, and attempts to reach its founder by phone and e-mail prior to deadline failed.

Trying to head off the need before the fact seems a sounder business model and would provide advisers with additional opportunities to reach out to clients.

“Advisers I’ve demonstrated the service to tell me they like the idea of having a tool that allowed for a longer-term relationship that was less episodic, more organic and tied to the natural processes of contact when life changes occur, rather than just, say, a more arbitrary annual review,” Ms. Bloomgarden said.

Advisers interested in participating once an open beta is available can send an e-mail to partners @aftersteps.com.