The Proactive Aging Plan establishes your client’s living preferences, quality of life directives and attitudes toward medical treatment. It also incorporates the client’s life expectancy, health status and region to generate custom health-care cost estimates, including long-term-care cost scenarios.
Like the other modules, this one starts with demographic information. If you have already provided this information through another module, the information will carry over. The questionnaire begins by gathering some health information, including data on the client’s height, weight, level of exercise, tobacco use, diet and more. It also asks where the client will live during retirement to better estimate costs. Then it generates an estimated life expectancy based on the information provided. If a client does not like the computer-generated number, and I suspect some will not, they can alter it to their liking. Next, the client is asked a few questions about their attitudes toward health care in order to better determine whether their health-care costs will likely be higher than average.
If costs are likely, they are asked if they want to learn how to lower costs or revisit their previous answers. The next section deals with quality of life directives. Clients may be familiar with these, but according to McClanahan, clients often think in general terms as opposed to specifics, which can create ambiguity for those trying to carry out their wishes. For example, many clients might want to decline further treatment if they are brain-dead and given no chance of recovery, but they may not have clearly expressed those wishes before they are in a situation where they can no longer swallow food or speak. This exercise allows clients to make their wishes clear in some level of detail.
Once this section is completed, the program will identify inconsistencies, if any, and offer the user a chance to go back and address those inconsistencies if they so desire.
Next, clients are asked about living transitions. Do they want to stay in their own home until they die? If so, is the home suitable and will someone be there with them? If not, can the necessary adjustments be made, and at what cost? If not, alternatives are examined through a series of further questions. Surprisingly, there is a separate series of questions about clients’ ability to drive, presumably because when they give up driving it limits their independence and that is a source of friction within many families. The questionnaire asks the client in advance to describe under what conditions they would give up driving before the issue becomes an urgent one.
After the client completes this module, the program generates another report. It begins with a written summary of what the client has said/agreed to.
Then, given the information provided, it projects estimated costs (health insurance and health care) for each year of a client’s projected life expectancy. The projections also take into account the state the clients live in, and the area within the state where the clients say they will be living during retirement.
The report then uses the data to project the likelihood that the client will need long-term care (if any), the projected length of the care and the cost (if the care is provided locally). This is followed by a list of client preferences and directives and a checklist of required steps, divided by category. Like the other reports, these offer ample hyperlinks to definitions and additional information.
Besides the three modules, there are plenty of other useful functions here. There is an advisor dashboard that allows advisors to view a list of clients and which modules have been completed by each client. For each module completed, the advisor can generate a report right from the dashboard in a PDF or rich-text format, which can then be read and edited in Microsoft Word. You can also e-mail a client a report from within the dashboard or initiate a module update from here.
There is a tool kit that provides more information on each module. There are also numerous conversation starters that help novices to the field better approach these conversations with clients. There are all kinds of sample documents ranging from letters introducing the process to clients to pet care plans, family agreements on driving and more. There is also an education center with a rich selection of videos and articles on most related topics. To my knowledge, there is nothing quite like this available on the market today.
Whealthcare offers two pricing plans. For the caretaker plan and risk modules alone, the cost is $795 annually for up to 50 plans. The complete package with all three modules, which appears to me the better choice, is $995 for up to 50 plans.
My Initial Take
From a content perspective, there is really nothing to criticize here. This is the gold standard. If you want to provide this type of service, and you should, you will want to purchase Whealthcare. In addition, usability is surprisingly good for a newly released product. The reports are very well designed and user friendly.
If there is any criticism we can level at Whealthcare at all, it is the current lack of integrations, but that is to be expected at this early stage. Currently, you can import your contacts from another application, but there is no integration with the leading CRM, financial planning or portal providers. We expect those integrations to take place as Whealthcare gains traction and industry participants come to understand just how vital it can be for both clients and the future health of an advisor’s business.
It is a very rare occurrence for a firm to identify a new niche and establish a new software category within the financial advisory universe, but it looks as if Whealthcare has done just that. I know that McClanahan and her team have been developing this application for quite some time, but it looks like it was well worth the wait.test