Altruist Launches AI Financial Planning Agent
On the heels of the announcement last week that behemoth asset manager Vanguard would be acquiring it, custodian and technology provider Altruist has released a new financial planning agent.
The firm had announced the availability of a waiting list for the forthcoming agent back in June, following the rollout of an Altruist tax-planning agent in February.
The AI-powered financial planning agent, which is part of Altruist’s Hazel AI platform is meant to create comprehensive financial plans in minutes, covering retirement planning, investment optimization, cash flow analysis, estate planning, tax strategy, and insurance and risk.
Available to firms regardless of whether they custody assets with Altruist, the agent automates workflows that historically took advisors hours to complete, according to the company.
“Hazel’s financial planning agent allows a single advisor to do much of the work that a shop full of specialists would do, in a fraction of the time,” wrote Jason Wenk, founder and chief executive officer of Altruist in a prepared statement. “We believe this launch will fundamentally shift how advisors operate and how firm owners run their businesses.”
The agent provides real-time scenario modeling, allowing advisors to explore different savings, investment and spending strategies with clients.
Hazel builds plans using data from financial documents, client meetings, communications and other connected sources.
The platform uses AI to collect and understand client data but relies on dedicated calculation programs for financial computations, ensuring every figure is calculated rather than AI-generated, according to Altruist.
In its announcement, Altruist noted that its financial planning agent operates under zero data retention agreements with AI model providers, meaning customer data is never used to train AI models or sold to third parties.
Altruist did not immediately respond to a request for details on pricing for the new tool. In June, the company said it would be priced similarly to its tax planning capability, released in February. As a standalone product, Hazel Admin AI is available for $50 per seat per month on an annual basis; it costs $125 a seat per month with tax planning.
This follows news last week that Vanguard has agreed to acquire Altruist in an all-cash deal for $4.6 billion, according to sources. Under the deal, expected to close later this year, Altruist will continue to operate as a standalone business under Wenk and gain “greater capacity and long-term support to invest in its advisor technology and custody capabilities, while drawing on Vanguard’s reach and investment expertise,” according to the announcement.
The legacy custodians, Schwab and Fidelity Investments, still have a commanding lead over Altruist in the marketplace, but Vanguard’s backing, along with its own advice business, makes it a more formidable competitor, according to both analysts and advisors familiar with Altruist.
