Vanilla

Jul 29, 2024

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Experience the New Vanilla Academy: Estate Planning Courses For Advisors

Vanilla continues its investment in the tools and education that help advisors to empower a higher level of estate planning

Vanilla, the company behind the leading estate advisory platform, announces the relaunch of Vanilla Academy, the first estate planning educational hub specifically designed for financial advisors and planners. The updated offering features free, on-demand continuing education, multimedia content, and a range of downloadable guides and resources. Several of the courses offer continuing education credit for CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® professionals. The new educational hub highlights the company’s commitment to providing its customers and their clients not only with the technology they need to create meaningful legacies, but also the foundational knowledge to ensure those conversations are happening at the very highest level.

Available today, the initial course offering includes:

• Estate Planning 101, a three-part series
• Basis and Beyond: Estate Planning for Non-Taxable Estates
• Advanced Strategies for Taxable Estates
• New Client Conversations with Steve Lockshin
• How to Leverage Vanilla in Client Conversations
• Additional tips and tricks on how to use technology in estate planning

“Vanilla Academy’s relaunch represents a significant step forward in our mission to empower advisors and estate planners with the knowledge and skills they need to deliver outstanding service,” said Gene Farrell, CEO of Vanilla. “We are committed to making estate planning accessible and effective for everyone regardless of wealth level, and the enhanced Vanilla Academy is a testament to that commitment.”

The curriculum of Vanilla Academy recognizes that advisors, attorneys and planners all come to estate planning with varying levels of knowledge and experience on the subject. It is designed to meet the needs of professionals at all stages of expertise, with courses ranging from foundational content to those that delve into more complex use cases. Featuring insights offered by an impressive roster of in-house experts as well as partners, Vanilla will regularly add new courses to the curriculum, ranging from core estate planning topics to soft skills like how to have challenging conversations with clients.

“One of the biggest obstacles I’ve seen in scaling bespoke estate planning within firms is simply the varied education and confidence level of advisors. Vanilla Academy will be a tremendous asset in helping ensure all advisors have a basic competency in estate planning and are able to continually uplevel that competency to provide additional value to clients,” said Patrick Carlson, in-house counsel at Vanilla. Carlson is one of the featured instructors in Vanilla Academy, and has extensive past experience teaching estate planning to attorneys and financial advisors.

The launch of the new Vanilla Academy is a part of the company’s new Summer School offering, which includes live courses and office hours with subject matter experts. Currently, all Vanilla Academy courses are available to any qualified advisor, planner or attorney, though in the future, some courses will be reserved strictly for Vanilla customers. For more information about Vanilla Academy and to sign up for the upcoming courses and events, visit https://www.justvanilla.com/vanilla-academy.

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.

Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Center for Financial Planning, Inc. (CFP Board Center) owns and licenses to Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. the CFP® certification mark, the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ certification mark, the CFP® (with plaque design) certification mark and the CFP®(with flame design) certification mark in the United States, which CFP Board authorizes use of by individuals who successfully complete CFP Board’s initial and ongoing certification requirements. CFP Board Center also owns and licenses to CFP Board the CFP BOARD® service mark. Any marks owned by CFP Board Center and licensed to CFP Board are used with permission.