Vanilla
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Dec 18, 2025
How Financial Advisors Add Estate Planning Value
As your clients’ lives evolve, so should their estate plan. Your role as their financial advisor is to guide them through each stage, ensuring their plans stay relevant and aligned with their goals while working alongside estate attorneys to protect what they've built. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how to position your estate planning services and deliver real value throughout the entire estate planning process. Why estate planning requires wealth management expertise For even simple estates, clients need professional help beyond drafting documents. They need someone who understands how their wealth connects to their legacy goals....
Vanilla
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Dec 16, 2025
Cetera Chooses Vanilla, Further Enhancing Estate Planning Services for Approximately 12,000 Advisors
Through the partnership, Vanilla’s modern estate planning platform offers streamlined workflows, deeper client conversations, and planning confidence to Cetera advisors BELLEVUE, WA – December 16, 2025 – Vanilla, the trusted and modern estate planning platform for financial advisors, today announced a partnership with Cetera Financial Group (Cetera), the premier financial advisor Wealth Hub, that supports independent advisors and institutions with personalized support, flexible affiliation models, and end-to-end growth solutions.Through the partnership, Cetera’s network of more than 12,000 financial advisors and institutions can leverage Vanilla’s comprehensive estate planning platform to simplify complex workflows, visualize planning scenarios, and support more engaging, outcome-driven...
Vanilla
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Dec 15, 2025
2025 Year in Innovation: What We Built and Where We’re Headed
We recently hosted our Year in Innovation webinar with CEO Gene Farrell and Head of Product Strategy Sam Trapkin. For those who couldn't join live, here's the recap. Estate Planning Is No Longer a Fringe Offering Just a few years ago, estate planning was still seen as a niche service—something advisors assumed belonged exclusively to attorneys or ultra-high-net-worth practices. That's changed. Today, advisors from independents to the largest institutions recognize estate planning as essential to their value proposition. The shift makes sense. Advisors who quarterback estate planning conversations build deeper relationships, retain more assets across generations, and differentiate in ways...
Vanilla
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Dec 09, 2025
The Importance of Estate Planning: 6 Ways to Start the Conversation
All of your clients need estate planning. Many of them don't realize it yet. Only a little over 50% of Baby Boomers have a trust, will, or an estate plan in place, a figure that decreases with each subsequent generation. Meanwhile, your ability to retain their families through generational wealth transfers hangs in the balance. Only 27% of heirs plan to keep their benefactor's wealth advisor, dropping to 20% for those who have already received an inheritance. Estate planning isn't just critical for your clients. It's critical for your practice. As an advisor, you can influence your clients’ ability to...
Jessica Lantz
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Dec 03, 2025
What’s New in December: Enhanced navigation, estate diagram upgrades, and powerful integration updates
This month brings transformative changes to how you interact with Vanilla. We've reimagined core navigation experiences, unified our estate visualization tools, and rebuilt our integration infrastructure from the ground up. Each enhancement addresses friction points in your daily workflows while unlocking new possibilities for managing complex client portfolios. Edit Balance Sheet data in one unified workspace The challenge: Cleaning up imported Balance Sheet data requires navigating between multiple accounts, creating a fragmented workflow that consumes hours and makes it difficult to maintain context across portfolios. The solution: A single, table-like workspace where you can review, validate, and correct all imported...
Vanilla
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Dec 01, 2025
The Guide to Legacy Planning for Financial Advisors
Over the next two decades, $124 trillion will transfer from baby boomers to younger generations. Your clients are part of this colossal shift, and they want help navigating it. Research confirms this: 93% of clients want estate planning advice from their advisor. Beyond the legal structures of estate planning, legacy planning is increasingly a key component of a comprehensive financial plan. Where estate planning focuses on wills, trusts, and tax strategies, legacy planning adds another dimension, addressing personal values, family dynamics, charitable intentions, and the stories your clients want to pass down. Legacy planning: Estate planning plus intent Your clients...
Vanilla
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Nov 20, 2025
How Advisors Are Moving Upmarket by Redefining Value
Industry data reveals the strategies behind revenue growth in wealth management—and why the most productive advisors serve fewer clients, not more. On November 13th, Vanilla hosted Michael Kitces and Steve Lockshin for a conversation about building thriving practices in today's market. Their insights, backed by decades of industry research and direct experience managing billions in client assets, challenge conventional wisdom about scaling an advisory firm. Below are their key takeaways. The Stability of Advisory Fees The median advisory fee has remained at one percent for over twenty-five years. This benchmark held steady through the introduction of robo-advisors, algorithmic trading,...
Vanilla
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Nov 18, 2025
Vanilla Named a Preferred Estate Planning Technology Partner by Elevation Point
New Partnership Brings State-of-the-Art Estate Planning Tech to Independent Advisors BELLEVUE, Wash.-- Vanilla, a leading estate planning technology platform, today announced its partnership with Elevation Point, a growth accelerator and minority stake partner for independent advisors and breakaway firms. Through the partnership, Vanilla becomes a preferred estate planning software provider for Elevation Point’s network of growth-oriented advisors. Elevation Point partners with successful independent RIAs and breakaway advisors who recognize that continuous growth and innovation are essential to serving the complex needs of high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients – and to consistently delivering an exceptional client experience. Its collaboration with Vanilla reflects...
Vanilla
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Nov 11, 2025
What Are the Six Different Types of Power of Attorney?
Choosing the wrong power of attorney (POA) can leave families scrambling during a crisis. Each state has its own rules governing these documents, and understanding which POA is suitable for a situation matters more than most people realize. In this guide, we break down the six main types of POAs for individuals, families, caregivers, financial advisors, and estate planners who need clarity on this essential part of estate planning. 1. General power of attorney A general power of attorney is a legal document that gives one person (called the agent or attorney-in-fact) broad authority over another person’s (called the principal)...
Jennifer Raess JD, CFP®, CLU®
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Nov 05, 2025
2026 Tax Planning Reset: What Advisors Need to Know About OBBBA and IRS...
The IRS has released its inflation-adjusted numbers for 2026, confirming key updates for estate, gift, and income tax planning. These changes, combined with provisions from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), will reshape how advisors approach gifting, deductions, and trust taxation. Now is the time for advisors to revisit clients’ estate strategies to prepare for 2026. Here's a snapshot of the key changes advisors need to know: 2026 Changes at a Glance Category 2025 2026 Lifetime estate & gift exemption $13.99M/person $27.98M/married couple $15M/person $30M/married couple Annual gift exclusion $19,000/ $38,000 if gift splitting $19,000/ $38,000 if gift splitting...
Jessica Lantz
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Oct 29, 2025
What’s New in October: V/AI Estate Summary page improvements, waterfall enhancements, and more!
October brings meaningful enhancements to Vanilla—from enhanced AI estate summary capabilities to more intuitive waterfall modeling. Each improvement is designed to help you work faster and deliver deeper insights to your clients. Here's what's coming soon. V/AI Estate Summary page improvements: More control, better readability, clearer insights The challenge: Advisors need AI-generated summaries that are easy to scan, read, and present to clients without extensive reformatting. The solution: Enhanced typography and spacing create a more visually appealing, scannable layout that makes key information immediately more readable V/AI will clearly show which documents were used to generate the summary, building your...
Jennifer Raess JD, CFP®, CLU®
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Oct 28, 2025
The OBBBA Clock Is Ticking: Why 2025 Might be the Year to Act...
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), signed into law in July 2025, introduces some significant charitable giving changes starting in 2026. It expands opportunities for everyday donors while tightening limits for high-income taxpayers. With year-end approaching, advisors should review these shifts now to help clients maximize charitable impact and tax benefits before the new rules take effect in 2026. The impact of these changes will vary depending on whether clients itemize their deductions, making it important to tailor charitable strategies accordingly. New rule for non-itemizing individuals Starting in 2026, taxpayers who take the standard deduction can claim an "above-the-line"...
