Jessica Lantz

Jan 29, 2025

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What’s New in January: Enhanced Estate Planning Tools, Personal Financial Statements, and More

At Vanilla, we’re starting 2025 with powerful new features designed to streamline estate planning workflows and provide deeper insights for advisors and their clients. Here’s what’s new this month:

Now Available:

Attorney Network: Seamless Legal Support

Our new Attorney Network provides direct access to qualified estate planning attorneys through the Vanilla platform. Key benefits include:

• Flexible engagement options from quick consultations to full service support
• Transparent pricing and clear service options
• Coverage across all 50 states
• Expert support for trust funding and estate administration

Estate Health Check: Simplified Client Engagement

We’re excited to introduce our enhanced Estate Health Check feature, now with shareable public links. Advisors can now efficiently engage with prospects and clients through a branded, user-friendly interface. This powerful tool helps you:

• Scale your practice with one-to-many outreach capabilities
• Streamline prospect engagement through newsletters, websites, and social channels
• Prepare for client meetings more effectively with pre-filled assessments
• Convert relationships more efficiently

Plan Snapshot: Outside Estate View

We’ve introduced a comprehensive single-page view that provides clear visibility into your client’s complete estate picture. This new feature offers:

• At-a-glance views of trusts, charities, minor accounts, and life insurance
• Current and future estate distribution visualizations
• Customizable display options for different planning scenarios
• Enhanced trust and beneficiary display options

Personal Financial Statement (PFS)

Our new Personal Financial Statement provides a consolidated view of client financials, addressing the need for more concise financial presentations. Key features include:

• Streamlined asset and liability tables for each owner
• Business entity Balance Sheet visualization
• PDF report availability 

Coming Soon + Beta Releases:

Opportunities V2: Data-Driven Client Engagement (Beta)

Our breakthrough Opportunities V2 feature transforms how advisors identify and act on planning opportunities. This intelligent system:

• Automatically monitors estates for conditions requiring attention
• Provides clear, actionable insights with supporting educational content
• Delivers targeted agenda items for client meetings
• Supports wealth levels from mass affluent to UHNW
• Includes advanced planning opportunities such as GRATs, charitable trusts, and estate tax mitigation strategies

Opportunities V2 is being launched as a limited beta – if you’re interested in joining, reach out to your CSM. 

V/AI Automatic Profiles: Streamlined Document Processing (Beta)

We’re expanding our AI capabilities with V/AI Automatic Profiles, now in beta. This innovative feature:

• Automatically extracts key information from uploaded estate planning documents
• Creates initial estate profiles in minutes
• Provides high accuracy for basic information like names, dates, and fiduciaries
• Streamlines the onboarding process for mass affluent clients
• Complements our full abstraction services for comprehensive reviews

Audit Trail Capabilities

Meeting the needs of enterprise clients, our new audit trail feature provides enhanced security and compliance monitoring:

• Comprehensive tracking of user license activity
• 90-day historical data export
• Self-service access for organization administrators

Looking Forward

These January updates demonstrate our ongoing commitment to enhancing the estate planning experience for advisors and their clients. We’re continually working to make estate planning more accessible, efficient, and comprehensive.

Ready to explore these new features? Contact your customer success manager to learn more about how these tools can transform your practice, or get a demo.

Note: Some features may be in beta or have limited availability. Please contact your Vanilla representative for specific access details.