Once you see it, you can't unsee it.
That's how H. Adam Holt describes what his tech company, Asset-Map, does for advisors by drawing out an interactive map of a client's entire financial life, from investments to insurance to taxes and planning for the entire household — all within minutes rather than hours.
"When was the last time an advisor took the time to create an image of your own personal life with heritage and your family and your parents and your kids," said Holt, founder and CEO of Asset-Map based in Philadelphia. "People just don't have it. And when they see it, they can't unsee it."
Holt started Asset-Map in 2013 based on a tactic he was using as a CFP in which he would draw out clients' financial plans like cartoons.
"I would draw these visualizations of households of my understanding of what was going on in their lives, all the complexity — mom, dad, a charity, a business. …People started asking for them," he said. "But what was happening is that I was uncovering all of the opportunity, the assets, the insurance because people wanted their drawing to be accurate. And that's when I decided to build the tech around it because it was very scalable."
More than a decade later, nearly 2 million people have used AssetMap through a financial advisor. In June, the firm launched a partnership with tax planning software provider Holistiplan, adding tax analysis as a visual to the overall financial plan map.
This tech vendor profile is among a series of
Name: Asset-Map Holdings
Website: https://www.asset-map.com/
Size of Asset-Map: Several thousand advisors use Asset-Map, representing 1.8 million clients and $1.5 trillion in financial instruments, Holt said.
Products and services offered: Asset-map, like the name implies, creates a data visualization of a person's financial life as a map. It then has different layers of tools or upgrades, like an interactive target map that gauges a client's progress toward a financial goal; and "signals" of green, red and yellow flags to identify potential risk areas if there is a life change or market crash.
The tool is meant to provide a broad view and analysis of a client's financial life, including investments, retirement accounts, insurance, legal and tax analysis with Asset-Map's new partnership with Holistiplan.
"They can take your tax return, scan it and give you upfront the entire thing in 15 seconds," he said. "It's a huge advantage to be able to review a tax return and see what the problem is because the biggest single expense in finances is taxes. So, it made so much sense to solve this problem."
Who Asset-Map aims to serve: Advisors of any firm and client size including independent broker-dealers, asset managers and CPAs.
What kind of problems Asset-Map is trying to solve: Holt is a firm believer in addressing two core issues: Creating holistic financial plans easily used by anyone regardless of their asset size; and doing so in a way that is scalable for advisors so they want to serve young investors outside more sought-after high net worth bracket.
"Financial planning, we believe, is accessible to everybody as long as the advisor is willing to do it," he said. "We're really scalable across the whole gamut because the core to all financial planning is knowing all the facts of the clients. … We want to be a conversational planning tool."
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How Asset-Map is different from competitors: Many wealthtech companies aim to offer a holistic view of portfolio management.
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But Holt said Asset-Map has a leg up by including more complex financial matters like taxes and mapping out a person's financial entirety in 20 minutes or less.
"A lot of financial planners have been talking about being holistic for a long time" but "there's very few advisors who add tax to that holistic conversation," he said. "Most of them have insurance and investment conversations. So this new Holistiplan integration is finally enabling advisors to start being holistic."
What does it cost: Asset-Map has a clear, fixed-price subscription model
What's next/new development: Asset-Map is driven by data, so Holt said the next step is running data analytics to create more financial predictions for "calamity planning," like if a client becomes a long-term care provider for a relative and needs to shift finances.
"We are starting to run machine learning to try to identify specific conversations that advisors should be having with their clients based upon the likelihood it needs some attention," he said. "There's an enormous amount of financial planning conversations that are not happening, and the system can start to tell you this. You'll see more innovation there."
The biggest challenge going forward: Most advisors are well aware of the so-called great wealth transfer after Cerulli Associates reported that $84 trillion in assets will change hands over the next 20 years, primarily from baby boomers to the younger generations.
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Holt argued it's already happening by "quiet clients" — the adult children of baby boomers — who are questioning their parents on why they are paying commissions to an advisor using traditional portfolio management with little engagement.
"They just don't stay with mom's and dad's advisor. They don't relate to them, they don't understand them…they're not interested in the same things and never built a relationship with the advisor," he said, stressing the importance of advisors having client-family meetings. "It's putting a lot of pressure on the existing advisors who manage that money to actually start retooling and delivering more value."
