How Vanilla Helped Verdence Capital Advisors Advance Estate Planning for Complex Families

The Challenge: Estate Planning for Ultra-High-Net-Worth Clients

Verdence Capital Advisors is an independent registered investment advisor delivering comprehensive wealth management for high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth families, including advanced estate strategy and family office services. As client complexity continued to increase, the firm made a deliberate move to further strengthen its estate planning platform under the leadership of Managing Director of Financial Planning, Sarah Mouser.

While Verdence had long relied on eMoney as its core planning system, estate and tax strategy for sophisticated families required deeper analytical capability and seamless integration with existing infrastructure. Any enhancement needed to integrate fully with Verdence’s established systems and produce refined, client-ready deliverables.

“As we looked at the evolving needs of our ultra-high-net-worth clients and our multifamily office relationships, we evaluated where our technology could be further strengthened,” Mouser explains. “Estate and tax planning rose to the top.”

Integration was non-negotiable. Verdence had committed to eMoney and Orion as foundational systems, and any additional solution had to align seamlessly with that architecture.“If a solution could not integrate with our core systems, it was not a fit,” Mouser says. “Maintaining a single source of truth is essential to delivering consistent, accurate advice.”

The Evaluation: Why Vanilla

After evaluating several leading estate planning platforms, Verdence focused on how the tool would fit their approach to delivering advice, starting with the client experience.

“Why we chose Vanilla was because their deliverables resonated with how we wanted to deliver advice to clients,” she explains. “We’re always looking at the end-user experience. That’s not necessarily the planner, that’s the client. What is a client going to experience?”

The data flow mattered too. Mouser had already established processes for how planning work moved through the firm, and Vanilla needed to fit that framework.

The Deciding Factor: Efficiency Plus Security

What sealed the decision was Vanilla’s combination of document intelligence and its secure environment, which is particularly important when handling sensitive estate documents for high-net-worth families.

Vanilla aligned with Verdence’s standards because of its structured document analysis within a controlled environment, by having the ability to ask targeted questions about both the document and the resulting analysis directly within the platform, Mouser explains. ” Vanilla allows for an incredibly efficient workflow and process all within a closed, secure environment you would want and expect when working with sensitive documents.”

Estate Planning as Part of Comprehensive Advice

For Verdence, estate planning isn’t a standalone service. It connects to every other aspect of a client’s financial life.

“Estate planning integrates with all areas of planning,” Mouser says. “It’s going to affect cash flow decisions, beneficiary designation alignment, tax planning. Everything intersects.”

That integrated approach is why having the right tools matters. When estate planning deliverables are clear and client-ready, advisors can spend less time wrangling documents and more time having the conversations that  move clients forward.

The Bottom Line

For Verdence, Vanilla filled a specific need: estate planning technology that delivers polished, client-ready outputs while keeping sensitive documents secure. It’s now a core component of a planning platform built to serve clients consistently, from core wealth management relationships to the most complex family office engagements.

Verdence Capital is a current client of Vanilla