Aegon, through its corporate venture arm Transamerica Ventures, recently invested in Everplans, a New York-based startup that helps people create, store, and securely share estate and legacy planning information.
[node:field_featured_media:entity:field_media_image]The company provides both a consumer offering as well as an advisor-facing platform that enables advisors to offer Everplans accounts directly to clients and to collaborate with them on the creation of their plans.
Everplans is an emerging leader in the financial advisor technology space, according to Investment News' '5 adviser tech trends that will define 2016'. It joins the existing portfolio that includes predictive analytics company 0xdata, digital life insurance broker PolicyGenius, and reinsurance analytics company Quantemplate, among others.
Everplans will be 'custom-branded' and implemented in Transamerica, Aegon's US brand, as a solution for their customers. Aegon is also analyzing if Everplans' services and technology can be implemented in country solutions in Aegon UK and Aegon The Netherlands.
Vast network of advisors
The addition will enable Aegon's Transamerica customers to benefit from financial and legal guidance pulled from a vast network of advisors in the US.
"The addition of Everplans fits with Aegon's strategic purpose: to help people achieve a lifetime of financial security," said David Macmillan, CMO of Transamerica. "It provides us with a more consistent, full-life offer for customers through our advisors," he said. "Right now, an advisor might only see a customer for one segment of our offer - insurance, or for a mortgage. Providing this instrument gives a full-life overview."
Customer focus
While document sharing platforms like Dropbox and estate planning services already exist, Everplans "has a huge amount of content to bring to advisors from the legal side, and from investment and research," David added.
An additional benefit is that Everplans leads customers through a step-by-step process to create their own plan, before they even approach a sales person. "It helps the customer sort out 'what do I need to take care of?'," he said. "They can then decide on what they actually need.