Estate planning gets an AI makeover thanks to Vanilla

Artificial intelligence is certain to change how financial advisors and wealth managers operate, with many applications streamlining and accelerating processes.

Estate planning solutions firm Vanilla is aiming to leverage the power of AI to speed up everyday tasks such as turning estate documents into diagrams, creating projections for federal and state-specific estate tax, and beneficiary summaries.

Using its own purpose-built AI model called VAI, the firm’s newly launched suite of tools will assist advisors in understanding the unique circumstances and issues for high-net-worth families. This will include identifying planning opportunities to help advisors stay ahead of the curve.

“We’re proud to introduce comprehensive, tech-forward solutions that make it easy for wealth planners and advisors to deliver proactive planning advice to clients at enterprise scale,” Gene Farrell, CEO of Vanilla, said in a statement. “We anticipate that these tools will be particularly impactful in helping to develop plans for high-net-worth clients, accelerating and simplifying what has traditionally been a complex process.”

Vanilla was founded in 2019 and two years later secured $11.6 million in a funding round that included investment from basketball legend Michael Jordan.

EXPANDED SOLUTIONS

In time, Vanilla is also aiming to boost education for both advisors and clients using its AI model and to improve plan implementation.

Its solutions will also keep up with changes in laws and regulations and how these impact clients’ plans.

The suite of tools includes Vanilla Estate Builder, Vanilla Scenarios and Vanilla Document Builder.

“Leading wealth advisors are modernizing their approach so they can deliver comprehensive estate advisory services,” Farrell said. “As more clients seek out holistic services from ‘total wealth advisors’ we believe dynamic, visual technology like Vanilla will help advisors deepen client relationships and expand share of wallet.”