Richmond, VA, Nov. 01, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) today announced that CIT GAP Funds has invested in McLean, Va.-based OneDigitalTrust, an innovative digital EstateTech platform helping financial institutions and wealth management advisors easily integrate a user-friendly estate planning offer into their product set. OneDigitalTrust will use the funding from CIT GAP Funds to enhance its platform’s capabilities and expand its business development, marketing and customer capture programs. The funding is expected to help power OneDigitalTrust’s growth and uptake among financial, insurance and estate planning professionals to help them meet the needs of a rapidly growing market for individual and family estate plans.
The majority of people consider a Trust or Will to be extremely important, and nearly $70 trillion will transfer to heirs or charities in the next 25 years. However, approximately two out of three Americans do not have any kind of estate plan and many existing and legacy estate planning solutions fail to satisfy the market’s growing need for online, accurate, low-cost, quick solutions. Designed for lifelong use, the OneDigitalTrust platform makes estate planning simple and affordable and is designed to be distributed through institutions to their customers and employees (B2B2C).
“OneDigitalTrust recognizes that an estate plan is among the most personal of documents, containing often highly emotional and detailed decisions about family and finances. We believe everyone, regardless of the size of their wealth, should have affordable access to easily create and manage an estate plan - one they can continue to shape as their lives evolve,” said Sonny Kapoor, Co-Founder and CEO, OneDigitalTrust. “While life itself doesn’t have a plan, our platform offers a way to ensure your personal estate does. We are grateful for the support of CIT GAP Funds and look forward to expanding our customer base.”
Attorneys typically do not offer low-cost solutions and well-meaning people attempting the process on their own are often left confused and vulnerable to mistakes, such as state-specific statutes. OneDigitalTrust distinguishes itself as the only online estate planning provider with a highly configurable, enterprise-grade PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) feature. OneDigitalTrust is licensed by institutions who may brand it as their own and offer it to their customers as part of their own product portfolio. The company has secured several multi-year contracts with financial institutions on the strength of steady customer growth due to its ease-of-use, flexibility, customization capabilities and user-centric design. The platform provides “anytime access” capable of handling changes and updates to stay in lockstep with a user’s movement through life-stages and wealth-cycle transitions.
“With its team of diverse backgrounds encompassing angel investing, management consulting, senior corporate executives and entrepreneurs, OneDigitalTrust is in the right hands to make a societal impact and achieve their mission to reinvent personal legacy and estate planning for the digital age,” said Jennifer O’Daniel, Senior Investment Director, CIT GAP Funds. “OneDigitalTrust is unlocking and meeting demand for estate planning during a historic period of inter-generational wealth transfer. We are thrilled to invest in OneDigitalTrust and look forward to working with them throughout this phase of their growth.”
About One Digital Trust
OneDigitalTrust is the next generation, DIY (Do It Yourself) digital EstateTech platform that offers essential human assistance to allow users to update their personal estate plans through all of life’s stages. Its platform is available directly to large financial institutions and allows them to easily offer online estate planning to their customers. Based in McLean, Va., OneDigitalTrust offers services in all 50 states, plus Washington DC. For more information, please visit https://www.onedigitaltrust.com/.
About CIT GAP Funds
CIT GAP Funds makes seed-stage equity investments in Virginia-based technology, clean energy, and life science companies with a high potential for achieving rapid growth and generating a significant economic return for entrepreneurs, co-investors, and the Commonwealth of Virginia. Since its inception in 2005, CIT GAP Funds has deployed $32.4 million in capital across more than 240 portfolio companies, including 17 companies in designated Opportunity Zones. CIT GAP Funds' investment decisions are guided by the CIT GAP Funds Investment Advisory Board (IAB). This independent, third-party panel has drawn from the expertise of leading regional entrepreneurs, angel, and strategic investors, and venture capital firms such as New Enterprise Associates, Grotech Ventures, Harbert Venture Partners HIG Ventures, Edison Ventures, In-Q-Tel, Intersouth Partners, SJF Ventures, Carilion Health Systems, Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, and Alpha Natural Resources. For more information, please visit https://www.cit.org/gap-investment-funds.html.
About the Virginia Innovation Partnership Authority (VIPA)
The Virginia Innovation Partnership Authority (VIPA) was established in 2020 to support the life cycle of innovation, from translational research; to entrepreneurship; to pre-seed and seed-stage funding, as well as acceleration, growth, and commercialization, resulting in the creation of new jobs and company formation. The Authority provides a collaborative, consistent, and consolidated approach that will assist the Commonwealth in identifying its entrepreneurial strengths, including the identification of talents and resources that make the Commonwealth a unique place to grow and attract technology-based businesses. The VIPA, with CIT as its operating arm, brings together components of existing and new program activities in an approach through which the whole is greater than the sum of the individual programs. VIPA's design includes governance and management capabilities to ensure that programs generate transformative and measurable results. For more information, please visit www.cit.org/vipa.
