FP Alpha is offering its tax service as a standalone product for advisors starting today.
This unbundles FP Alpha’s tax services from its broader platform, which offers services for tax, estate and insurance planning.
Andrew Altfest, founder and CEO of FP Alpha, said his firm decided to unbundle the tax service after hearing more from advisors about a desire to only receive tax assistance.
“The vast majority of studies show over 90% (of clients) want that help,” Altfest told WealthManagement.com. “And advisors are looking to meet that need efficiently, and it has been able to be done well in the past because it has been very time-consuming.”
Altfest said the standalone product will not differ from the previously bundled version but will enter the market at a competitive price for solo practitioners and larger firms.
The service saves advisors significant time by automating the previously manual (and time-intensive) method of advisor tax planning, according to Altfest.
“What we do with FP Alpha is, the advisor simply needs to upload their client’s tax return. FP Alpha reads that tax return and visualizes that tax return so it becomes a client education piece as well as something easy for the advisor to digest,” Altfest said. “Then, the advisor gets insights on how to improve their situation, and can model different scenarios.”
The full FP Alpha platform includes services for tax, estate and insurance planning for advisors. The tax standalone product follows the unbundling of the estate services, which became available separately for advisors in March 2023. (FP Alpha won a WealthManagement.com Industry Award for innovations in estate planning in 2024 for that product.)
Altfest said if customers start requesting additional parts of the platform (including its insurance component) be unbundled, the firm will “carefully consider” that.
“We do want to just recognize the needs of customers out there and be able to meet them where they are,” Altfest said. “We feel a growing market opportunity for that, and it’s just going to increase as more people and more advisors recognize the benefit of providing these services for clients.”
