Cetera Taps Vanilla to Modernize Estate Planning for 12,000 Advisors

BELLEVUE, Wash. – December 16, 2025 – Cetera Financial Group, a premier wealth hub for financial professionals, today announced a significant partnership with Vanilla, a modern estate planning technology platform. The collaboration will integrate Vanilla’s comprehensive suite of tools into Cetera’s network, empowering approximately 12,000 financial advisors and institutions to enhance their estate planning services for clients.

This strategic alliance aims to demystify one of the most complex and critical areas of wealth management. By providing access to Vanilla's platform, Cetera is equipping its advisors to move beyond traditional financial planning and offer a more holistic approach that addresses the intricacies of legacy, inheritance, and multi-generational wealth transfer. The move signals a broader industry shift towards leveraging specialized technology to solve deep-seated challenges for both advisors and their clients.

A Modern Toolkit for a Complex Challenge

For decades, estate planning has been a fragmented and often intimidating process, involving dense legal documents, siloed communication between financial and legal professionals, and difficult client conversations. The Cetera-Vanilla partnership directly confronts these issues by providing a centralized, technology-driven solution.

Through the integration, Cetera advisors gain access to several key features designed to streamline workflows and improve client engagement. Vanilla’s platform is known for its ability to transform complex trust documents and wills into clear, interactive visuals, including dynamic charts and summaries. This allows advisors to facilitate more meaningful discussions about asset distribution, tax implications, and legacy goals. Advisors can also use Vanilla’s scenario modeling tools to illustrate the impact of various tax-saving strategies, such as Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts (ILITs) or Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts (GRATs), in real-time.

“Estate planning is a key component of a comprehensive wealth management experience, particularly for multi-generational clients,” said Scott Baker, Cetera’s Head of High-Net-Worth Solutions, in the announcement. “Vanilla further expands the tools Cetera can offer its affiliates as part of how we support them in service to families throughout their financial journey, especially when managing significant, complex asset transfers.”

Other core components now available to the network include the Vanilla Document Builder, which allows for the creation of state-specific foundational documents like wills, trusts, and powers of attorney. Furthermore, the platform includes the Vanilla Attorney Network, cited as the largest in its category with over 100 legal professionals across all 50 states, providing a crucial bridge between financial planning and legal execution.

The Push for Holistic, Tech-Driven Advice

This partnership arrives at a pivotal moment for the financial services industry. Advisors are increasingly expected to act as integrated wealth coaches, guiding clients through all aspects of their financial lives. This trend is amplified by the looming "Great Wealth Transfer," an unprecedented shift of wealth projected to be in the tens of trillions of dollars over the coming decades. Effectively managing this transition requires sophisticated tools that can handle complex family structures and financial instruments.

The collaboration is designed to help advisors meet this demand head-on. By embedding estate planning more deeply into their service model, advisors can strengthen client relationships, increase retention, and crucially, build connections with the next generation of beneficiaries. This proactive engagement is vital for retaining assets as they pass from one generation to the next.

“This partnership enables more holistic planning experiences for both advisors and clients,” stated Gene Farrell, CEO of Vanilla. He noted that with the platform, “advisors can increase retention, deepen trust, and perhaps most importantly, use estate planning strategies to help clients gain clarity and peace of mind around their long-term plans.”

For Vanilla, the alliance represents a massive expansion of its market footprint, validating its model and providing access to one of the largest advisor networks in the country. It aligns with the company’s mission to remove the traditional barriers of complexity and overhead that have historically kept many advisors from fully incorporating estate planning into their practices.

Reshaping the Competitive Landscape

The Cetera-Vanilla deal is a prime example of a dominant trend reshaping wealth management: the integration of specialized fintech platforms into the ecosystems of large, established financial institutions. Rather than building every solution in-house, firms like Cetera are curating a tech stack of best-in-class tools to create a seamless “Wealth Hub” for their advisors. This strategy allows for greater agility and access to cutting-edge innovation.

In the competitive estate planning software market, this partnership gives both companies a significant edge. While platforms like eMoney Advisor and RightCapital offer robust financial planning with estate modules, Vanilla has carved out a niche with its deep focus on advanced estate analysis, AI-powered document review, and its integrated legal network. According to a 2024 survey from Kitces Research, Vanilla was already recognized as one of the top two estate planning platforms by market share among advisory firms, and this deal is poised to solidify that position.

This move by Cetera may pressure competing broker-dealers and large registered investment advisors (RIAs) to evaluate their own estate planning capabilities and seek similar fintech partnerships. The future of financial advice appears to be a hybrid model where human advisors are empowered by sophisticated technology to deliver more personalized, comprehensive, and efficient service. By automating data collection and analysis, these platforms free up advisors to focus on strategy, empathy, and building long-term, trusted relationships.

Ultimately, the collaboration aims to transform estate planning from a transactional, document-driven task into an ongoing, collaborative dialogue. By providing the tools to visualize a legacy, advisors can help clients not only protect their wealth but also plan with purpose, ensuring their financial and familial goals are secured for generations to come.