Personalization, Visualization, & Innovation: How Wealthspire Advisors Transforms Estate Planning with Vanilla
Holistic planning is at the core of Wealthspire Advisors’ practice, and their team of fiduciary advisors focus on connecting all aspects of their clients’ financial lives, including estate planning. Wealthspire partners with Vanilla to deliver a more modern, client-centric estate planning experience. This collaboration blends Wealthspire’s deep advisory expertise with Vanilla’s technology, creating a process that is not only more efficient for advisors but also more engaging and understandable for clients. Their approach focuses on three pillars that are reshaping estate planning for the next generation of clients: personalization, visualization, and innovation.
Personalizing estate planning for the whole family
Wealthspire treats clients not as isolated individuals but as interconnected family units. Each piece of advice and every planning capability is tailored to the unique mix of personalities, relationships, and goals within a family. Heather Flanagan, Managing Director, Head of Family Office Services, explained that “Vanilla is able to synthesize and summarize plan information so that it’s easily accessible, and gets everybody to understand how it’s all integrated.”
This allows Wealthspire to illustrate how different planning options affect multiple generations, fostering better conversations and alignment. By making these connections visible within Vanilla, they ensure each family member feels seen and understood.
“Vanilla is able to synthesize and summarize plan information so that it’s easily accessible, and gets everybody to understand how it’s all integrated.”
Heather Flanagan, JD, LL.M, Taxation, TEP
Managing Director, Head of Family Office Services, Wealthspire Advisors
Using Vanilla Scenarios™ to bring plans to life
One of the most impactful elements for Wealthspire is Vanilla Scenarios, which allows the firm to model and visualize “what if” changes to an estate plan in real time. Flanagan shared that “We’ve been working with Vanilla for the past two plus years, and it’s been a great partnership,” noting how the platform helps her team bring abstract strategies into sharp, client-friendly focus.
The ability to instantly show the downstream implications of adding a new scenario makes complex strategies far easier to grasp. Flanagan was able to provide extensive feedback for the recent updates to Vanilla Scenarios, helping make it the most sophisticated instant modeling tool on the market for advisors today.
Emphasizing innovation that impacts the client experience
Flanagan highlighted that Wealthspire’s collaboration with Vanilla is more than a transactional vendor relationship—it’s a genuine partnership aimed at innovation. “Vanilla has been a terrific partner in helping elevate the client experience,” Flanagan remarked. Vanilla benefits from Wealthspire’s real-world feedback to refine its technology, while Wealthspire gains tools that directly enhance the client journey. The result is a dual impact: a more intuitive, empowering experience for clients and a more efficient, insight-rich process for advisors.
“Vanilla has been a terrific partner in helping elevate the client experience.”
Heather Flanagan, JD, LL.M, Taxation, TEP
Managing Director, Head of Family Office Services, Wealthspire Advisors
Wealthspire Advisors is the common brand and trade name used by Wealthspire Advisors LLC and its subsidiaries, separate registered investment advisers and subsidiary companies of NFP Corp., an Aon company. ©2025 Wealthspire Advisors. All rights reserved.
Please note that Wealthspire Advisors is a current client of Vanilla.
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