Why Bragg Financial Switched to Luminary for True AI-Powered Estate Planning

Bragg Financial is an independently owned RIA headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina,  managing approximately $4.7 billion in assets. Founded by Frank Bragg more than 60 years ago, the firm remains privately and independently owned by family principals — a deliberate choice in today’s current wealth management landscape.  

That independence shapes how Bragg shows up for its clients. The firm's 36 employees are organized into three groups: client advisory, client service associates, and portfolio  management. Bragg deliberately separates portfolio management from client-facing planning, allowing advisors to focus deeply on financial plans, retirement strategy, and — critically — estate planning across the firm's wealth management and family office relationships.  

"We do a lot of planning for our clients," said Evan Anderson, President of Bragg Financial and a client advisor. "Not only investment management, but retirement planning, and heavily in estate planning. We have a lot of folks on the team with deep backgrounds in estate and trust planning."  

That depth made the search for the right estate planning technology especially important.  

Building a Tech Stack to Match the Firm's Drive to Innovate  

With deep in-house expertise across estate and trust planning, Bragg wanted technology that could match the sophistication of the work for every client the firm serves, from wealth  management relationships with more straightforward estate needs to family office clients with multigenerational structures. Bragg's first move was to adopt a different estate planning platform, putting it to work supporting client engagements across the firm.  

True to the firm's continuous-improvement ethic, however, Bragg kept evaluating the market. Over time, specific friction points surfaced between what their previous platform delivered and what the team needed day-to-day.  

Where the Previous Platform Fell Short  

A handful of friction points stood out:  

• Estate summaries required heavy manual input. The previous platform was positioned as offering AI-driven summaries and workflows — but in practice, the inputs required the team to enter information piece by piece in flow, rather than empowering them with true, AI-native processes to free up their time. "It was just much more data entry on our end with respect to the estate documents," Anderson said. This meant a complicated plan could take a day and a half to build out.  
• Day-to-day workflows weren't as intuitive as the team needed. Common tasks like setting dispositions took longer than they should have. "It was more difficult, more cumbersome to set  the dispositions," said Marta Keiser, a wealth planner on Bragg's advisory team and the firm's day-to-day power user of estate planning software. The platform also felt harder to navigate independently when questions came up mid-task.  ‍
• Support response times slowed momentum. When questions surfaced, answers were slow to arrive. "Their response time to inquiries was long," Keiser said. "It was frustrating to be in the  middle of working on something, get stuck, send an email, and have to wait two days for a response before continuing."

The Bragg team's instinct to scan the market for better solutions opened the door to evaluating alternatives.  

Why Bragg Chose Luminary  

As Bragg evaluated solutions, several capabilities stood out. The through-line was a platform that could serve both ends of the client base: fast, scalable estate summaries for wealth management clients, and the depth needed for sophisticated family office planning.  

• Seamless AI-powered document summaries. Estate document summaries are the bread and butter of Bragg's day-to-day estate planning work — the deliverable that supports ongoing planning conversations across the firm's wealth management book. Where the previous platform required heavy manual entry, Luminary let Bragg upload documents, generate clean summaries shaped by custom prompts, refine as needed, and move on. "Luminary did that more seamlessly," Anderson said. The Estate360 deliverable made the output digestible for client use, a step beyond just an internal summary.  
• A more intuitive product. "Luminary is just more intuitive," Keiser said. "When I started using it, I picked it up much faster than the prior platform."  
• Responsive support and a real product roadmap. This came up again and again in the evaluation. Bragg wanted a partner that would actually answer support questions quickly and continue investing in the product’s short, medium, and long-term evolution. "Luminary keeps making improvements, they listen to their clients, they're eager to get feedback and to help," Keiser said.  ‍
• Strong wealth transfer modeling and visuals. Although wealth transfer modeling was part of the previous platform's feature set, Bragg didn't end up using its illustrations broadly. In Luminary, advisors are now actively running illustrations of GRATs, SLATs, and charitable strategies, layering each one onto the current estate plan and quantifying the potential benefits in real time. "We like the graphics, and the supporting materials with explanations of the different strategies are valuable to us," Anderson said. Today, both have become central to how Bragg brings sophisticated wealth transfer strategies to life for clients.

The Impact: Time Reclaimed and Conversations Elevated  

Luminary's value at Bragg shows up in two different ways. For the firm's wealth management book, it's about immediate efficiency: clean estate summaries in a fraction of the time. For family office relationships, it's about a deeper, more dynamic planning experience that justifies the time invested in modeling complex strategies.  

From Half-Day to 90 Minutes on Estate Summaries  

For the majority of Bragg's work in Luminary, generating estate summaries for the team and for clients, the difference versus the prior platform has been substantial.  

"Where an advisor or wealth planner might have spent a half day on the previous platform, they can now have overviews ready in about an hour and a half," Anderson said. "And in some cases, quicker than that." 

That time compounds across Bragg's wealth management book, where the typical client just needs a clean, accurate estate summary to support ongoing planning conversations. Advisors can upload, review, confirm, and move on.  

A Better Client Experience That Actually Drives Decisions  

For Bragg's more complex family office clients, the goal was to give clients a deliverable that helps them understand and act on their plan, in addition to saving time.  

Anderson described a recent example: a couple in their mid-forties in Greensboro, on the fence about whether to engage in serious wealth transfer planning. They were busy running a business, and estate planning felt like an afterthought.  

"We started with a GRAT illustration to keep it simple," Anderson said. "Then we showed them the asset flow and how things were going to pass down to the kids. The husband was particularly into it — he kept commenting, 'This is really helpful to see it all on one page and project it out.'"  

The Luminary visualizations turned a vague, intimidating subject into something concrete the couple could engage with. "They went from 'this seems cumbersome, we're trying to run a business' to 'okay, you've got your arms around this — let's take the next step with our attorney,'" Anderson recalled.  

It's a pattern Bragg has seen repeatedly. "Sometimes it's just the way information is presented that's impactful," Anderson said. "Luminary helped move the ball forward."

A Real-Time Resource for Advisor-Client Conversations  

Beyond formal deliverables, Bragg has found additional value in Luminary's AI document chat, particularly for working through detailed questions about a client's estate plan in real time.  

Keiser described a recent session with another advisor on the team. The advisor had a client with detailed questions about their draft trust documents. Rather than digging through hundreds of pages, the two of them sat down with Luminary's chat function and asked the document specific questions.  

"We sat there and just asked the chat AI those questions," Keiser said. "It was really beneficial — both for our own understanding and for being able to explain it to the client.”  

What the Switch Has Meant for Bragg's Practice  

For Anderson, the bottom line is straightforward: Luminary is "a professional tool in the toolbox." For wealth management clients, it delivers immediate efficiency. For family office clients, it delivers a better client experience that's worth the investment of time.  

"The feedback we've gotten from clients confirms it's worthwhile, it's worth the investment of time for the enhanced experience," Anderson said.  

Advice for Firms Considering the Switch  

When asked what she'd say to another firm experiencing the same friction Bragg ran into a year ago, Keiser didn't hesitate.  

"Luminary is just a more intuitive, easier to work with platform. They keep making improvements. They listen to their clients like ourselves, are eager to get feedback, and to help their clients. I would definitely suggest looking into Luminary for a better experience overall." 

Anderson agreed. "Luminary has differentiated themselves in terms of their approach to service and innovation."  

See how to bring your complex plans to life with Luminary. Request a demo now.