Wealth.com launches an AI-powered paralegal to assist advisors with estate planning

Wealth.com wants to add an AI legal expert to your corporate leadership team in an effort to revamp the traditional estate planning process.

on Tuesday, based in Phoenix, Arizona Digital technology platform for estate planning Announced the launch of “Ester”, a new AI and machine learning-powered tool to help advisors hand over personal wills, trusts and other estate planning documents.

The brains behind the technology say that two of Ester’s most notable advantages are its ability to understand a client’s specific goals and the intricacies of current real estate plans; and the fact that esters are conditioned by short-term and long-term memory that incorporates the client’s past actions into their responses.

Wealth.com

To further differentiate itself from other large language models, officials say the Ester property model has been trained and supported by Wealth.com’s estate planning knowledge, experience and data.

This particular design allows Ester to guide customers by answering their questions and providing proactive direction, according to the company. Leaders also endorse it as an efficiency game, noting that Ester can automate tasks traditionally handled by in-house financial analysts and paralegals so that those individuals are free to handle more impactful work.

Wealth.com also envisions Ester filling a significant gap in customer expectations. In 2021, Spectrem Group researched with wealthy investors about the services they receive from wealth management firms, as well as the services they expect to receive.

According to the Redefining wealth management In the study, Spectrum initially found a large gap between what was expected and the services actually received, with estate planning one of the largest. As many as 93% of clients expect to receive estate planning guidance from their advisors, but only 22% say they have received such help.

Investment management is the only service that was provided at an almost expected level, as 95% of wealthy investors expect this service and 88% get it.

But Danny Lohrvinck, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Wealth.com, understands the interest that comes with launching an A and I product in the current environment.

He said that artificial intelligence and machine learning will be at or near the top of lists of trends in 2023.

But it’s important to “distinguish the AI ​​that’s the buzzword in the PPT presentation versus the real AI that’s being actively trained and harnessed by experts to deliver scalable value to businesses and their customers.

“When properly supervised, these technologies can be incredibly powerful, but if left unsupervised or trained they can be misleading and dangerous,” Lohrvinck said in a statement. “This is why there is an arms race for AI/ML talent, and fortunately we have the best in the field.”

One of the architects responsible for the development of Esther is Eduardo Fontes, Senior Vice President, Data Science In wealth.com. Fontes, who holds a master’s degree in data science from MIT, brings nearly three decades of experience in machine learning for financial services to Wealth.com and began working on Ester shortly after joining the team in October 2022.

Wealth.com

Fontes was previously Managing Director and Chief Data Intelligence Officer at TIAA, where he led the company’s Center of Excellence for Data Science and Machine Learning. He also made significant contributions as Head of Data Science and Machine Learning at Vanguard.

For Fontes, no financial plan is complete without an estate plan, and he believes Esther will enable financial advisors to efficiently onboard clients while allowing those clients to build estate plans that suit their needs.

In an interview with financial planningFontes said Esther is always learning, and the advice the tool gives should lead to action. It should also give more people the convenience that comes with having a sound estate plan through consultants.

“Ester was developed to support individuals at all levels relying on their financial knowledge, supporting advisors as they support their clients in navigating through the process of creating estate planning documents. Which, by the way, is not very easy,” Fontes said. . “When I did that, I still thought I had a lot of questions. So I hope Esther can answer my questions.”

But Fontes said Esther and other tools like it are actually meant to level the playing field. Today, he said, the industry can focus on finding the right way to get the message across rather than relying on how it has always been done.

He points to Esther’s ability to take existing estate planning documents and turn them into something visual as a new way of doing things.

“The way we build things at Wealth is to build with a purpose. And I really mean that because for us building with a purpose means (offering) people the ability to navigate the waters of financial services or financial literacy,” Fontes said. . “I can level the playing field, either visually or verbally…but we feel it as long as the message gets through.”

The companies that have acquired the new tool are very excited about Ester’s potential. Donna De Schene, group vice president of portfolio solutions and wealth planner at Keebeck Wealth Management in Chicago, said she had been looking forward to the full release since Ester was in beta.

“The capabilities of the conceptualization suite took me back in time by reading existing planning documents and summarizing them into a visual in mere seconds,” Shin said in a statement. “Esther is truly revolutionary and an absolute ‘must’ for all counsellors.”