How SCS Financial Achieved Consistent, High Impact Client Deliverables With Luminary

SCS Financial is a wealth advisory and investment management firm serving ultra-high-net-worth families with personalized, fee-only advisory services. The firm delivers integrated investment and wealth planning strategies built around each client’s unique goals. Known for its collaborative and forward-thinking culture, SCS continually seeks new ways to enhance the client experience and support its advisors with modern tools and insights. 

Delivering high-quality, customized, and strategic estate planning advice is a priority for the firm. Like many in the industry, SCS relied on familiar tools like Excel and PowerPoint prior to engaging Luminary. As they grow, there is a desire for a more unified approach to its estate planning offering that can be scaled across the firm.

Through its partnership with Luminary, SCS has been able to streamline its estate planning deliverables, increase efficiency within teams, and strengthen collaboration with outside advisors. 

Pam Halter, Managing Director of Wealth Strategy and a former estate planning attorney, summed it up simply: “SCS is a very forward-thinking company, and we really want to arm our advisors with the best technology. Luminary impressed everybody who used it.” 

The Opportunity: Bringing Consistency and Efficiency to Client Deliverables 

Before Luminary, estate planning outputs at SCS were customized manually by advisors for each meeting, with flowcharts for more complex plans requiring a large investment of time from the advisors. While all deliverables included common elements such as balance sheets, entity summaries, and estate tax calculations, the style varied depending on the tool and user creating the analysis. 

As Halter described it, “While we have always provided high-quality estate planning advice to our clients, the process behind the scenes required a lot of custom work that could not always be scaled in an efficient manner. We wanted to have a consistent look and feel, as well as a repeatable and efficient process, that provides clients with the information for decision making while not overly burdening the client service teams.” The firm recognized an opportunity to create a standardized, scalable approach that gave advisors the opportunity to spend more time with their clients sharing estate planning outputs and providing thoughtful advice. 

This vision focused on two things: 

• Establishing a standard baseline deliverable for client meetings and a consistent approach to meeting preparation across the firm as it grows. 
• Giving advisors more time to focus on strategic conversations and idea-sharing, rather than manual modeling. 

Finding a Better Way to Visualize and Collaborate 

As SCS began exploring technology to meet its goals, Luminary stood out for its sophistication and ability to handle the complex estate planning strategies often utilized by ultra-high-net-worth families. 

“The focus on ultra-high-net-worth families and the sophistication it allows for clients was what impressed us,” Halter explained. 

Luminary allows advisors to show families a dynamic estate waterfall diagram, integrated with up-to-date financial values from portfolio reporting tools and projected growth, alongside balance sheets and tax calculations. More than just static visuals, these tools allow advisors to layer on proposed strategies—such as charitable giving and multigenerational trusts—and immediately show how they would affect both tax liabilities and distributions to beneficiaries. 

It’s one thing to talk about it. It’s another to really see it. Clients can visualize the actual dollars going to each beneficiary, which sparks productive conversations surrounding our clients’ planning goals and intentions.

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Why SCS Chose Luminary 

What began as a search for technology to streamline visual aids and deliverables became a firmwide initiative to improve efficiency, consistency, and collaboration in estate planning. Luminary strengthened  SCS’s ability to: 

• Establish a repeatable baseline deliverable for every client: the estate waterfall. 
• Integrate balance sheet data, tax calculations, and projected growth into one  presentation. 
• Support collaboration with external advisors by providing attorneys and CPAs with access to the same data and visuals. 
• Model complex planning strategies such as GRATs, SLATs, and charitable gifting, along with GST calculations and multigenerational modeling to clearly illustrate their impact on taxes and distributions. 

As Halter put it, “One of our goals is for Luminary to house all estate planning documents for our clients… enabling us to collaborate with attorneys and other advisors in a more efficient manner.

The Impact: Raising the Bar for Client Conversations 

SCS has already seen the benefit of Luminary in client meetings. For example, the waterfall tool—tied to actual values and projected growth over time—has allowed clients and advisors to have more dynamic conversations regarding planning initiatives, while simultaneously reducing the amount of time advisors spend on manual inputs.

This clarity has changed the conversation. “We’ve had a lot of really positive feedback,” Halter said. “Estate planning strategies can be difficult to visualize, and Luminary goes a step further than just a flowchart. The ability to allow clients to view the dollars going to each beneficiary and alter the planning in real-time is very powerful. Clients can see what their loved ones or charitable beneficiaries will receive not just today, but twenty years into the future.” 

This capability has sparked meaningful discussions about family legacy, values and communication. SCS works closely with clients’ other advisors, who have also been impressed by Luminary's capabilities. Halter recalled an example of a client meeting where Luminary was used, sharing that the client’s attorney “was really impressed. He could see exactly what was going on in Luminary, and it elevated the conversation.”  

Luminary has also become a differentiator in prospective client meetings. Even with limited data, SCS has used waterfalls and scenario comparisons to help prospective clients visualize outcomes. “Prospects have appreciated the ability to see it clearly,” Halter explained. “The waterfall page and the summary page are some of our favorites, especially when comparing different hypothetical situations.” 

Advisor Enablement: Smooth Adoption Across Teams 

Rolling out Luminary across SCS has been an intentional process, supported by a clear plan, and internal momentum. Advisors and associates have steadily incorporated the platform into client meeting preparation, and even team members with limited estate planning experience have been able to help onboard clients following some basic training. 

While developing plans for complex scenarios still requires some level of customization, the platform enables advisors to more efficiently produce sophisticated deliverables that may be utilized across teams in the future. “Once a plan is built in Luminary, it’s ready to revisit at the next client meeting—whether that’s next quarter, next year, or beyond,” Halter shared.  

From Better Deliverables to a Firmwide Standard 

As SCS continues to grow, Luminary is being adopted as the firmwide standard for estate planning deliverables. Many client meetings will include a waterfall visualization as a way to begin or refresh the conversation around planning and goals. 

“As we grow, consistency is very important,” Halter explained. “We’re working on streamlined processes that meet our objectives, so all advisors are leveraging the technology.” 

The Bottom Line 

Halter summarizes the benefit simply: “The single biggest benefit is having one place that houses all of a client’s estate planning information and synthesizes it with financial data—with sophisticated visuals. The quality is unmatched, and the customer support team is beyond helpful.”  

Through Luminary, SCS has been able to maintain its high standards for estate planning deliverables as the firm grows. By leveraging the platform, advisors have more time to engage clients in meaningful discussions about their planning and long-term goals, and clients benefit from the dynamic approach of seeing the impact of their planning decisions in real time.