AstuteWheel launches Astute Estate Planner

Hans Egger

Leading client engagement platform AstuteWheel yesterday launched Astute Estate Planner at a media event hosted at fintech hub Stone & Chalk.

Astute Estate Planner is a stand-alone estate planning tool which revolutionises the process for professionals, including financial advisers, risk advisers, accountants and lawyers. In the case of financial advisers, Astute Estate Planner enables them to facilitate their component of the estate planning process in under an hour.

“Astute Estate Planner helps clients understand and consider important things, like deciding on an executor, guardians or beneficiaries before meeting with their estate planning professionals,” said AstuteWheel’s Hans Egger. “Clients can therefore complete much of the perfunctory information required by their professionals electronically before meeting with them.”

While financial advisers are not legally permitted to provide estate planning advice, they can facilitate the process. Astute Estate Planner has been confirmed as a tool which facilitates the gathering of information on the clients wishes to create a briefing document that streamlines the estate planning process.

Mr Egger said Astute Estate Planner allows advisers to spend better quality time with clients, using auto-generated visuals like electronic family trees and entity diagrams and recording the client’s wishes with regards to Wills, beneficiaries, powers of attorney and guardianship, and how they’d like their estate to be distributed and protected.

“Astute Estate Planner translates to considerable savings in both time and money for the client and better, more efficient meetings not only for financial advisers but also for other professionals engaged in the process such as lawyers and accountants.”

Mr Egger said AstuteWheel has also been working on integration projects with two online legal firms to provide even greater estate planning efficiencies.

“The information collected and documented using Astute Estate Planner by the adviser, can be imported into legal document generation systems such as, for example, Yodal and View Legal, to produce draft Wills and estate planning documents for the lawyer for review and discussion with the client,” he said. “This integration work has provided a seamless, cost-effective and efficient experience for clients.”

Astute Estate Planner was developed as a stand-alone tool, following the launch last year of AstuteWheel’s estate planning module to financial adviser users of AstuteWheel.

“Their positive feedback has been quite overwhelming,” Mr Egger said. “We have also had a lot of interest from other professionals including accountants, lawyers and risk advisers, who have all shown a strong interest in using this software to improve their own client engagement. The development of Astute Estate Planner is in part the result of the conversations we have had with all these professionals over the past year.”

4 Step Process using Astute Estate Planner

1. Client provides key information online prior to meeting (20 to 45 mins)
2. Adviser meets with the client and documents their wishes (30 to 60 mins)
3. Lawyer reviews the system’s Briefing Document and drafts the relevant Wills and Estate Planning documents
4. Lawyer meets with the Client and confirms that the draft documents satisfy the client’s wishes (45 to 60 mins)

Note: The Adviser may wish to attend the Lawyer/Client meeting.

Adviser comments:

“This tool allows financial planners to add real value for their clients, by giving them the opportunity to plan the preservation of their estate in a clear, illustrative process. The clients not only feel confident that they understand their estate and non-estate assets, they are able to present the finalised notes to their solicitor, which saves both parties time and money.”
(Emma Linton Doig, Fortress Financial Solutions)

“There is a whole lot of relief and the family tree building process is where a lot of that comes to life. I can have the conversation with the client and provide the report to the solicitor so he can take the clients through the documents. And it’s done!” (Emma Cunningham, Aventree)