How GHP Investment Advisors Use Vanilla to Elevate Estate Planning and Win Ultra-High Net Worth Clients

The Challenge: Making Complex Estate Plans Understandable

Like many advisory firms, GHPIA found a disconnect between the quality of estate planning documents clients received and their actual comprehension of those plans. Despite working with reputable attorneys and investing significantly in the planning process, clients couldn’t explain how their estates would be distributed or what tax implications they faced.

“We found that some of our clients worked with estate planning attorneys that created these beautiful documents, but the clients had no idea what it meant,” explains Deirdre McGuire, an advisor at GHPIA. “Clients didn’t understand the actual estate, the numbers behind it, and how it would flow. They just knew they spent a small fortune on an attorney that was recommended to them.”

Beyond comprehension issues, GHPIA discovered that document accuracy was often compromised by life changes that had occurred since the original planning.

“Understandably, clients don’t realize how much life changes over a period of time. They’ll say, ‘Oh, I didn’t do my plan that long ago,’ and we’d remind them that their power of attorney is 22 years old, their child has been twice divorced, and sometimes, we’d find that their name is incorrect in the plan documents,'” McGuire notes.

Before Vanilla, McGuire would manually track estate distributions in Excel spreadsheets—a time-consuming process that lacked visual appeal and was prone to errors, especially for clients who frequently updated their plans.

Real Results: Time Savings and Client Peace of Mind

Efficiency Gains

The time savings for GHPIA become particularly evident with clients who need frequent plan updates—something that would have been impractical with manual processes.

One GHPIA client has had significant life changes that prompted numerous estate plan revisions. Without heirs, this client frequently updates his plan as he reconsiders beneficiaries and charitable giving allocations. GHPIA has run his Vanilla report approximately 30 times.

Previously, McGuire would manually track all accounts and assets in spreadsheets, recalculating percentages each time allocations changed. “I had spreadsheets, and it was just all over the place,” she recalls.

Meeting Different Learning Styles

McGuire appreciates that Vanilla’s reports accommodate different learning preferences, which is something particularly valuable when presenting to couples.

“Some people are more visual. What I appreciate about Vanilla is how it caters to all the ways clients may want to take in the information. Some want to read the words, some want to see the visual, and others want to see the numbers,” she explains. “If we’re presenting to a couple, it often placates both, because it has the information regardless of how you learn.”

Family Meeting Success

GHPIA uses Vanilla reports in family meetings where parents want to share their estate plan with adult children. The ability to customize reports, showing certain information while hiding other details like specific dollar amounts, has proven invaluable.

One client asked GHPIA to facilitate a family meeting to notify children of their net worth and estate distribution. “Having a visual representation to share in the meeting helped foster a relationship with the clients and their children. It was really helpful for the whole family,” McGuire says. “Even the estate planning attorney praised the quality of the reports.'”

Translating Legalese into Real-World Impact

One of GHPIA’s core goals is to “build trust, reduce anxiety, and simplify complexity.” Vanilla helps them achieve this by translating attorney language into terms clients actually understand.

“Oftentimes, attorneys talk in words that regular people don’t understand, and so Vanilla is able to help us translate it into “real people” terms,” McGuire explains. “Regardless of which estate planning attorney they decided to work with…very few estate planning attorneys have a visual representation like Vanilla can do for us.”

The reports often surface practical issues clients hadn’t considered. For example, showing a client that their estate plan would make their 70-year-old son a landlord to a stepmother he barely knows—for potentially 30 years. These reports provide GHPIA advisors with talking points to better understand and help their clients plan for the future.

Competitive Differentiation

In a crowded industry where advisory firms seem to make similar claims about comprehensive service, demonstrating genuine depth has become critical to winning and retaining clients.

The service difference lies in depth of analysis. While many firms simply verify that estate planning documents exist, GHPIA uses Vanilla to analyze what those documents actually mean for the client’s financial future, creating specific action items and surfacing potential issues before they become problems.

Every prospective client goes through GHPIA’s comprehensive financial planning process, which includes gathering tax returns, estate documents (analyzed with Vanilla), investment statements, and insurance policies. This holistic approach, powered by specialized tools for each area, allows them to serve ultra-high net worth clients while also maintaining relationships. This year, they’ve added  71 new clients—36 of whom are children of existing clients.

The Bottom Line

For GHPIA, Vanilla has transformed estate planning from a checkbox item into a meaningful service offering that builds client trust, surfaces critical planning issues, and differentiates them in a competitive market.

“It really has been very helpful,” McGuire concludes. “Integrity is important to us, and we don’t put our name behind a lot of things. However, Vanilla has been instrumental, and we hope to continue using it in the future and expand how we’re using it, too.”

GHP Investment Advisors is a current client of Vanilla.