Estate planning startup Wealth is going after a $180 billion U.S. market by eliminating the three-ring binder of papers that become obsolete in months and replacing it with a digital dashboard that updates your holdings in real time.
Many technology companies have come with their approaches to solving this problem, from Trust & Will to Quicken’s WillMaker to Everplans. Rafael Loureiro, co-founder and CEO of Wealth, which emerged from stealth today, believes his company is taking a more unique approach by appealing to employers that want to offer more value-added benefits.
Loureiro founded the Arizona-based company with Rei Carvalho, founder and former CEO of Emailage, which was acquired by LexisNexis. Wealth enables members to create, manage and visualize their estate plans through an integrated ecosystem of proprietary legal documents, third-party APIs and a bank-level-encrypted digital vault.
“We thought, why can’t we make this process easier so your information is dynamic, always up-to-date and will motivate your family for growth to have a holistic view of all your assets,” Loureiro told TechCrunch. “This is important, because this is what’s going to make us different from everybody else. This is a holistic view of all your assets, including crypto, stocks, real estate, your car, identifying each institution and anything that’s important to you. If baseball cards are important to you, you’re going to be able to add them to the platform information with your estate plan.”
Here’s how it works: When you set up your profile, you will answer a series of questions, including where you live, so that Wealth can determine the types of documents you need. Then users interact with a dashboard where they can add all of their assets and create digital documents of important papers. All of that information now lives in one place, and users can designate emergency access to loved ones.
In addition to beginning to offer its products, the pre-revenue company is the latest to attract venture capital, bringing in a $16 million seed funding round, led by Anthos Capital, with participation from Bela Juju Ventures.
Much of the funding will go to R&D and continuing to assemble a team. Wealth already has 50 people and will grow to 70 by the end of the year.
Wealth initially will go after the employee benefits market. The company ran a survey at the end of 2021 and found that of 10,000 working Americans between the ages of 30 and 55, 13% are getting estate planning from their employer. Over 70% who do not have a plan said they would be more likely to set up one if it was offered by their employer.
Next up, the company is getting its mobile apps ready so that it can open its solution directly to consumers.