Altruist Launches AI Financial Planning Agent Within Hazel Platform

Altruist has expanded its AI platform for financial advisors with a new automated financial planning agent, adding comprehensive plan creation capabilities to its existing tax planning and workflow tools.

The enhancement, announced Tuesday, integrates into Hazel, Altruist's broader AI platform for registered investment advisers. The new agent automatically assembles financial plans by pulling together retirement planning, investment optimization, cashflow analysis, estate planning, tax strategy, and insurance considerations.

Why it matters

Financial planning has traditionally required hours of manual data gathering and analysis, limiting how many clients advisors can serve effectively. By automating the technical assembly work, the tool could reshape the economics of advisory practices, allowing solo advisors or small firms to compete with larger operations that employ teams of specialists.

How the system works

Hazel mines data from multiple sources including client meetings, notes, emails, CRM systems, and other communications. It then combines this information with market and regulatory insights to build both tax and financial plans. The platform can also answer questions, draft follow-up communications, and help advisors prioritize client interactions.

According to Altruist founder and CEO Jason Wenk, the system uses AI for data collection and analysis but relies on dedicated calculation programs for the actual financial computations. "Hazel's financial planning agent allows a single advisor to do much of the work that a shop full of specialists would do, in a fraction of the time," Wenk said in a release.

Data security protections

Altruist has implemented zero data retention agreements with its AI model providers, preventing those partners from retaining information from either Altruist or its customers. Client data is not used to train AI models or shared with third-party providers, addressing a common concern about AI adoption in financial services.

Availability and Vanguard connection

Wenk confirmed that both Hazel and the financial planning agent will be available to firms regardless of whether they custody assets with Altruist. This open-access approach comes as Vanguard moves forward with its acquisition of Altruist, announced in late August. Altruist, founded in 2018, will operate as a standalone business following the acquisition. Vanguard has been investing in Altruist since 2020 as part of its strategy to expand in the RIA market.

"We believe this launch will fundamentally shift how advisors operate and how firm owners run their businesses," Wenk said.

These details were first reported by 401(k) Specialist.