John Costello

Mar 12, 2024

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Vanilla Unveils Vanilla Scenarios™ to Power Interactive Estate Planning and Modeling

Vanilla Scenarios provides advisors and estate strategists with powerful planning tools to identify planning gaps, visualize future projections, and optimize plans for maximum impact.

Vanilla, a leading provider of innovative estate planning software, today announced the availability of Vanilla Scenarios™, a powerful new tool designed to optimize clients’ estate plans for the future. Vanilla Scenarios modernizes estate planning by providing advisors, wealth planners, and estate lawyers with unparalleled capabilities to model multiple planning scenarios dynamically and in real-time. 

Advisors can effortlessly layer multiple strategies onto existing plans and customize the details of each strategy, including changes to their client’s state of residency or beneficiaries. This dynamic modeling allows advisors to showcase the potential impact of each scenario instantly, providing clients with actionable insight and recommendations for meaningful planning improvements.

Vanilla customers will initially have the unique ability to layer a Grantor Retained Annuity Trust (GRAT), a Spousal Lifetime Access Trust (SLAT), an Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust (ILIT), and a Qualified Personal Residence Trust (QPRT) upon a client’s existing estate plan. More strategies will be added through the year. This groundbreaking feature enables advisors to visualize potential federal and state estate tax mitigation strategies in real-time, providing invaluable insights into the impact of planning decisions.

“Vanilla Scenarios takes proactive estate advisory to the next level, offering a comprehensive planning experience that empowers advisors, planners, and estate attorneys to deliver actionable estate advice, educate clients on the value of additional planning, and minimize both state and federal tax implications,” said Gene Farrell, CEO at Vanilla. “We are excited to offer a powerful new way for Vanilla customers to differentiate themselves to clients by providing personalized, impactful recommendations tailored to each client’s unique needs.” 

Vanilla Scenarios allows customers to:

• Create and customize multiple advanced estate planning strategies and fact changes, layering of multiple scenarios upon existing plans.
• Bundle strategies and fact changes into different hypothetical scenarios for dynamic comparison.
• Visualize the potential impact of future events, such as the estate tax exemption sunset in 2026, death of a spouse, or sale of a large asset, on net beneficiaries and estate tax liability.
• Access on-demand educational material to further enhance clients’ understanding of estate planning concepts.

Initial scenarios including GRATs, SLATs, ILITS, and QPRTs will be rolling out to customers in the coming weeks through mid-April. For more information about Vanilla Scenarios™ and other solutions available as part of the Vanilla Estate Advisory Platform, visit justvanilla.com.

About Vanilla

Vanilla is the world’s first Estate Advisory Platform, purpose-built by advisors and estate professionals to help wealth management firms deliver a holistic, modern estate planning experience to their clients. With Vanilla, advisors, planners, and estate attorneys can deliver differentiated advice, expand their client relationships, win new business, and increase their ongoing value by offering simplified, scalable estate analysis to every client. Learn more about how Vanilla is reinventing the estate planning experience, end-to-end at www.justvanilla.com.