Initial Impressions
My initial impression of Everplans is highly favorable. It is easy to use, easy to navigate and easy to understand. For each subsection, there is a related “Learn” page. Generally speaking, when you go to a new subsection for the first time, you initially land on the Learn page. The page explains what the subsection is about, why it’s important to share it, and any other relevant information.

For advisor clients, virtually any page you land on has the advisors’ virtual business cards with their pictures, names, company names and links you can use to call them or send them e-mail. There is also a “chat now” button in the lower right of the screen wherever you navigate within the application. This currently links to a dedicated Everplans employee, but it could, and probably should, link to the advisory firm if the user opts for that.

In addition to the to-do list, the site contains a wealth of other useful information on other topics such as powers of attorney, important documents, elder care, trusts, do not resuscitate (DNR) orders, life insurance and wills. For each topic, there’s a quick-start “cheat sheet” as well as a “what you need to know” section that does a much deeper dive into the topic. Where appropriate, there are links to specific, state-by-state resources. These cover everything from how to order death certificates, digital estate planning laws (if any), organ donation registries, death with dignity legislation (if any) and probate laws.
Security on the site is state of the art. Everplans uses bank level AES-256 bit encryption, 2048-bit SSL certificates and other technologies to keep client data secure.

There are no real problems with the site that I uncovered initially, but there are some additional features that would make it more valuable to advisors. The first, mentioned earlier, is account aggregation. Just adding all the financial information to the site can take considerable effort; if Everplans can automate part of the data collection, it would be a major plus. Second, the firm really needs to integrate with other industry software. As a stand-alone product, Everplans has value, but it would be infinitely more valuable if client information that already exists in other advisor systems could be used to populate the Everplans software. Even better, advisors ought to be able to use Everplans data to populate their own software products. For example, if prospects could enter their data into an Everplan, they could then deputize their advisors to take all relevant information for other CRM or financial planning software, etc. In this scenario, Everplans also serves as the advisor’s digital data gathering form. For the software to be effective in that regard, some information it does not currently collect would need to be added, but that should be a relatively simple task.

It would also be helpful if advisors could share documents and other data between the Everplans system and client vaults in other applications. For example, if an advisor generated a financial plan for the client, a copy could be routed to the vault the advisor provides and another copy could go to Everplans, so that the designated deputies could access it if the client grants permission.

Overall, I’d like to see more differentiation between the consumer site and the advisor version. Right now, the difference is primarily the advisor’s ability to brand the dashboard and pricing. Consumers who sign up for Everplans on the retail website are given access to a limited version of the planning tool for free; in order to access the Premium plan (what advisor clients see) with full functionality, they must pay $75 per year—and consumers are left to complete the plan on their own, without a professional advisor’s help. On the advisor plan, the advisor will be able to log in and see the client’s progress via a dashboard. This professional view gives the advisor the ability to nudge the client toward completion. An advisor could end up paying as little as $12 per client per year. Advisors typically pay $2,500 a year for the first 200 client plans—but this price gets reduced with group discounts and institutional relationships.

Everplans is a promising new product that could be a boon for advisors and their clients, but in order to reach its full potential, it will need to add some functionality. This should not prove to be a challenge, so Everplans is definitely worth a look. Visit www.everplans.com to try it for yourself.
 

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