Vanilla Blog

Vanilla

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Jun 25, 2026

Estate planning is built on a foundation of sensitive conversations and personal information: beneficiary designations, trust structures, asset distributions, family dynamics, and tax strategies. For RIA firms evaluating estate planning software, security belongs at the center of the decision-making process. As clients increasingly demand transparency into how their data is being used and managed, and regulators step up scrutiny on technology infrastructure, RIAs need to partner with vendors that understand the high stakes of data security. The nuances of estate planning data All financial data is sensitive, and estate planning data is no exception. A client’s estate plan is tied...

Jennifer Raess JD, CFP®, CLU®

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Jun 22, 2026

Life insurance. Two words that make people either lean in, or tune out entirely. After watching my mom navigate the financial aftermath of losing my dad unexpectedly, I've come to believe this is one of the most important conversations an advisor can have with a client. Not because it's easy. Because it matters. What Loss Taught Me About Planning My parents were snowbirds. A condo in Wisconsin for the summers, a condo in Florida for the winters. For a long time they owned a house in Wisconsin, but once both kids were out of the house and settled in homes...

Jennifer Raess JD, CFP®, CLU®

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Jun 15, 2026

You've worked with this client for 20 years. You've heard about their daughter's college graduation, their son's job change, their grandchild's first birthday. You've been there through market volatility, a divorce, a health scare, and three different estate plan updates. You feel like you know this family. Their kids, though? They know their parents "work with someone." That's often the full extent of it. When the wealth transfer happens — and it will — you're not continuing a relationship with those heirs. You're introducing yourself. To someone grieving. Under time pressure. With real financial and legal decisions to navigate, many...

Laura Jogani

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Jun 11, 2026

"This could take an hour and I'd still be thrilled." That's what a trust officer at a top trust company said to me while we were running a trust document review together in Vanilla. The AI had taken a little longer than usual — maybe seven minutes instead of five. She wasn't bothered because she knew what the alternative was. Five hours. One document. Every time. That's the reality of trust document reviews today at most trust companies. A new account comes in, or an annual review is due, and a trust officer sits down with a dense, 80-page document...

Laura Jogani

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Jun 04, 2026

Early in my career at JP Morgan, I needed information about a specific trust. Details about distribution standards, successor trustees, provisions that mattered for a client situation we were navigating. The trust officer who knew that account inside and out was on vacation. Two weeks out. We waited. That moment stuck with me, not because it was a crisis, but because it was so ordinary. It happened all the time, at one of the largest, most sophisticated financial institutions in the world. The information existed. It just lived in a person, not a system. And when that person wasn't there,...

Vanilla

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Jun 03, 2026

BELLEVUE, WA — June 3, 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 Wealth Management Industry Awards (the "Wealthies"). Vanilla was recognized as a Finalist in the following categories: Technology Providers — Thought Leadership: Estate Planning and Women research report Estate Planning — Technology The Thought Leadership recognition reflects Vanilla's research into how women approach estate planning, a study that surfaced where advisors can build deeper relationships with an underserved and fast-growing segment of wealth holders. The Estate Planning — Technology recognition...

Sarah D. McDaniel, CFA

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Jun 02, 2026

Memorial Day is behind us, school's out and our clients are booking flights, loading up the car, and mentally shifting into summer mode. That's exactly why this is your opening. When people travel, something shifts in how they think about the unexpected — what happens if a flight goes sideways, if there's a medical emergency, if something unforeseen leaves their family trying to figure out who to call and what to do. That quiet anxiety doesn't require a crisis or a deadline to feel real. It’s already there. And your clients are in that mindset right now. They're updating emergency...

Vanilla

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May 28, 2026

Estate planning is one of the most valuable services financial advisors can offer, but it’s also one of the most difficult to make relevant and tangible during a client meeting.  For many families across the wealth spectrum, estate documents already exist, created by their attorneys. But showing clients what those plans mean in the context of their full financial picture is challenging, and doing so in a way that’s simple, actionable, and engaging is even harder.  Estate planning flowcharts do the heavy lifting, surfacing relevant data from dense legal documents and helping clients immediately understand the impact of the information...

Jessica Lantz

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May 27, 2026

Estate planning conversations don't always start with a trust structure. Sometimes they start with a client who wants to give — to a cause they care about or to an institution that shaped who they are. What makes these conversations worth having carefully is that charitable intent and estate planning goals don't have to live in separate lanes. When structured thoughtfully, a charitable strategy can honor a client's values while doing meaningful work on their estate at the same time. That integration is increasingly where advisors are finding differentiation. Clients with appreciated assets, concentrated positions, or taxable estates are asking...

Vanilla

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May 20, 2026

Vanilla Continues National Expansion, Adding Carson Group to a Growing Roster of Leading Advisory Firms Bellevue, Washington — Vanilla is expanding its footprint across the independent advisory landscape, announcing today a partnership with Carson Group that brings its estate planning platform to more than 600 advisors. Carson Group manages over $58 billion in assets under management and serves more than 60,000 client families across a network of 165+ partner offices nationwide. "Estate planning is one of the most meaningful services an advisor can offer, and one of the most underleveraged," said Gene Farrell, CEO of Vanilla. "This partnership puts Vanilla...

Vanilla

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May 18, 2026

A financial advisor's book spans the full range of client complexity — from a household getting their first will to a UHNW family managing a multi-generational wealth transfer. Vanilla was built to handle all of it. More than 21,000 estates processed, $250 billion in assets modeled. Here's what that looks like in practice. Mass affluent clients: delivering good plans at scale For emerging wealth clients, the problem most advisors face isn't what to do — it's how to do it consistently across a large number of relationships without the process falling apart. Vanilla's Document Builder™ gives clients the tools to...

Vanilla

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May 13, 2026

If you missed our most recent product update webinar, here's a full rundown of everything we've shipped in 2026 — plus a preview of what's coming next. Our Product Marketing Specialist Jess walked attendees through the updates organized around the three commitments that guide everything we build: AI that elevates you, confidence in every client conversation, and getting you faster to the moments that matter. AI That Elevates You Tax Return Prompt for V/AI V/AI, Vanilla's proprietary AI, already generates comprehensive estate summaries from client documents. This year we added a dedicated tax return prompt to the Custom Prompt Library....