Cetera soups up advisor tech stack with Vanilla, Income Lab partnerships

Cetera is bolstering its planning toolkit for roughly 12,000 advisors with two new partnerships, adding more depth to its fintech ecosystem around tax and legacy planning.

The hybrid RIA giant's new integrations estate planning provider Vanilla and retirement income platform Income Lab highlight where the broader wealth tech race is headed: pairing tax-smart retirement income tools with estate planning workflows that can support clients from accumulation to legacy — and keep those relationships, and assets, in-house across generations.

Under a new agreement with Vanilla, Cetera advisors and institutions gain access to a platform built to digitize and visualize complex estate plans for multi-generational households. The software is designed to help advisors turn static legal documents into interactive scenarios, streamline fact-finding, and engage heirs earlier in the planning process.

“Estate planning is a key component of a comprehensive wealth management experience, particularly for multi-generational clients,” Scott Baker, Cetera’s head of high-net-worth solutions, said in a statement. He said Vanilla expands the tools Cetera can offer affiliates “as part of how we support them in service to families throughout their financial journey, especially when managing significant, complex asset transfers.”

“This partnership enables more holistic planning experiences for both advisors and clients,” Vanilla CEO Gene Farrell added, highlighting the potential to "increase retention, deepen trust, and ... use estate planning strategies to help clients gain clarity and peace of mind around their long-term plans."

Advisors on the Cetera network can use Vanilla’s document builder to help clients create state-specific wills, trusts, powers of attorney and health care directives, run quick estate “health checks,” and tap into an attorney network that spans all 50 states.

The deal extends momentum Vanilla has been building with larger firms, including its wealth tech partnership with Mariner, where the company’s estate planning tools are now embedded across a $560 billion platform.

Vanilla has also been pushing deeper into advisor workflows this year, from securing a US patent on its event-based resource allocation system to launching Vanilla Starter, a lower-priced package aimed at solo practices and smaller RIAs. 

Alongside Vanilla, Cetera is rolling out Income Lab across its advisor base, giving its communities access to tax-aware retirement income modeling that updates as markets, tax policy and client circumstances shift.

The software, which has garnered multiple recognitions across the retirement planning and wealth tech spaces, is built around ongoing guardrails rather than one-time projections, integrating factors such as Social Security, annuities, and portfolio volatility into a dynamic spending plan.

“As retirements get longer and client planning needs become more complex, clients need more than static projections; they need guidance that adapts,” said Johnny Poulsen, chief executive and co-founder of Income Lab. He framed the partnership as a way to bring dynamic planning “to scale” across Cetera’s advisor network.

In October, Income Lab unveiled a suite of AI tools to synthesize unstructured data into plans, facilitate focused client conversations, and answer advisor questions. Those offerings are available as a free tech preview to all Income Lab users until the end of the year.