Vanilla Blog

Jessica Lantz

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Sep 23, 2026

Data entry is one of the most time-consuming parts of getting a new client plan underway, and one of the least valuable places for you to spend your time. Every hour spent transcribing information is an hour not spent on strategy. We're tackling this problem by introducing the Magic Balance Sheet, powered by VAI - a new way to turn a client's financials into a fully populated Balance Sheet without requiring manual data entry. From PDF to populated in minutes The Magic Balance Sheet turns what has historically been one of the slowest parts of onboarding into a streamlined process...

Vanilla

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Sep 22, 2026

Today’s advisors are virtually inundated with AI tools promising to improve efficiency, help them reduce overhead, and enable them to add more value to their client relationships. AI-powered estate planning solutions are gaining traction, as clients increasingly expect estate planning guidance from their advisors. Just like with any AI tool, not all AI-powered estate planning technology is created equal. Some platforms deliver real value while others can cause costly liabilities that may not surface for months or even years. The evolving AI compliance landscape In the 2026 Investment Management Compliance Testing Report from ACA Group, the Investment Adviser Association, and...

Vanilla

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Sep 17, 2026

Bellevue, WA — September 17, 2026 — Vanilla, the modern estate planning platform built for financial advisors, today announced it was named a winner in the 2026 InvestmentNews 5-Star Technology awards, recognizing the best new technology and software for investment management professionals. The third annual awards were published on September 16, 2026. The recognition arrives a week after Vanilla announced its next chapter of agentic estate planning, and follows the company's win in the Estate Planning: Technology category at the 2026 Wealthies earlier this month. The next evolution of VAI extends an advisor's work across their entire book. VAI is...

Vanilla

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Sep 17, 2026

Advisors just beginning to explore estate planning often haven’t built the confidence through repetition to raise the conversation with clients. The hesitation is understandable, particularly at firms where estate planning isn’t yet a core service offering, so there’s no repeatable framework behind it. AI can lower the barrier to estate planning entry and help advisors offer guidance with more authority, but it can’t and shouldn’t fill every gap. According to a 2026 Edward Jones and Morning Consult survey, 82% of advisors are already using AI tools in their practice, and 53% see the technology as an opportunity to focus more...

Vanilla

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Sep 11, 2026

BELLEVUE, Wash., September 11, 2026 — Vanilla, the modern estate planning platform built for financial advisors, today announced it was named a winner in the Estate Planning - Technology category at the 2026 Wealth Management Industry Awards (the "Wealthies"). The 12th annual awards were held on September 10, 2026 at Cipriani 42nd Street in New York City. The category award recognizes Vanilla's constant innovation in a part of the financial plan that had gone untouched for decades. Estate planning sat at the edge of the advisor relationship because the documents were too dense to discuss and too slow to analyze....

Gene Farrell

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Sep 11, 2026

CEO Gene Farrell shares Vanilla’s vision for agentic estate planning and how AI will help advisors deliver more proactive planning. To the advisors we serve, our clients, our team, and our partners, This week we announced the next chapter of Vanilla, agentic estate planning. Most Americans don't have an estate plan even though most of them know they should. That gap has been sitting in plain view for decades, and it persists because the work was built by hand and priced accordingly. Your client got referred out, waited weeks, paid thousands for documents nobody could tell them were any good,...

Vanilla

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Sep 10, 2026

The next evolution of Vanilla’s AI, VAIⓇ, is designed to read across an advisor's entire book and surface what deserves attention, previewing at Future Proof Festival ahead of general availability later this year. BELLEVUE, Wash., September 10, 2026 — Vanilla, the modern estate planning platform built for financial advisors, today announced its next chapter with agentic AI at the core. The company is making estate planning a more powerful and proactive practice that delivers greater value and impact to advisors and their entire client book. Vanilla's AI, VAIⓇ, will work across the platform through specialized agents: reading documents to onboard...

Jessica Lantz

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Sep 03, 2026

In case you missed it, two of our recent product updates at Vanilla give you more room to model the sophisticated plans your most complex clients bring to the table. Here's a look at what’s new: Fund subtrusts with remaining GST exemption, and model GST status across subtrusts For high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients, documents often fund subtrusts with the remaining Generation-Skipping Transfer (GST) tax exemption. Getting that figure right usually means calculating it by hand, entering a fixed dollar amount, and redoing the math every time the numbers move. Now, when building out estate plans in Vanilla, the remaining GST...

Sarah D. McDaniel, CFA

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Sep 01, 2026

A client mentions, almost in passing, that her son just started ninth grade. She's talking about football tryouts and a new backpack, but what she doesn't realize is that she just handed you a four-year countdown clock. That's the opportunity hiding in every back-to-school conversation. Behavioral economists call it the "fresh start effect": people are far more likely to take action on long-term goals at temporal landmarks like the start of a school year. For advisors, that means September can be more than a convenient time to schedule client check-ins. It's the moment families are already primed to think about...

Vanilla

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Aug 26, 2026

BELLEVUE, WA (August 24, 2026) — Vanilla, the modern estate planning platform built for financial advisors, today announced it has been named a finalist in two categories at the 2026 ThinkAdvisor Luminaries Awards: Thought Leadership and Education (Firm), and C-Suite Leader of the Year, where President and CEO Gene Farrell and VP of Marketing Emily Tran were both selected. The Thought Leadership and Education recognition honors the research and education program Vanilla has built for advisors over the past year. That work includes the 2026 State of Estate Planning Report, drawn from a survey of more than 1,000 advisors and...

Jessica Lantz

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Aug 26, 2026

August's release adds real depth for your most complex clients, and gives you more ways to turn planning work into something tangible you can hand across the table. Here's what shipped, and what's coming next. Confidence at every client conversation Model your most sophisticated estate plans in one place The challenge: For high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients, sophisticated plans often fund subtrusts based on remaining Generation-Skipping Transfer (GST) exemption. Calculating that by hand, and redoing it every time assets or assumptions change, is slow and easy to get wrong. The solution: GST exemption as a funding option: Fund subtrusts using remaining...

Vanilla

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Aug 25, 2026

Most estate plans never get a second look after they're signed. An annual review is the goal many advisors aim for but in practice, plans get signed, filed away, and forgotten. Without regular oversight, plans can become outdated with costly consequences; for example, a will written before a divorce will likely still name the ex-spouse as a beneficiary. A trust drafted before a business sale won’t account for recent liquidity. An annual review cycle will catch these disparities eventually, but estate plans are dynamic documents that evolve with your clients’ lives. In particular, the following seven events should trigger a...