Vanilla and Callan Family Office partner to expand UHNW estate planning technology

Vanilla, a leading estate planning platform for wealth management firms, has partnered with Callan Family Office, a registered investment adviser serving ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) families, family offices, foundations and endowments.

The collaboration includes a strategic investment by Callan Family Office in Vanilla and a joint product development and go-to-market agreement, bringing together two organisations with a shared conviction that the UHNW market deserves fundamentally better estate planning technology.

The gap this partnership is built to close

UHNW families and family offices operate in a different world than most wealth planning software was designed for. Wealthy families typically feature layered entity structures, multigenerational wealth transfer across branches and trusts, complex ownership reporting, and deep integrations across institutional systems of record. Yet purpose-built technology for this market has remained largely underdeveloped.

"Vanilla was built from day one to serve the most complex estate planning needs in the market," said Gene Farrell, CEO of Vanilla. "One of the most progressive and successful multifamily offices in the country is choosing Vanilla as their partner to develop the future of UHNW planning, and that's a direct reflection of our depth, sophistication and track record."

Joint product development will focus on the capabilities that matter most at the top of the wealth spectrum: consolidated multigenerational planning visualisations and reporting, sophisticated support for complex entity and asset ownership structures, and deeper data connectivity between Vanilla and the broader ecosystem of systems family offices rely on daily.

“The partners of Callan Family Office have worked with UHNW investors for decades on average, and we have seen firsthand the limitations of the systems to handle the most complex estate planning needs,” said Jack Ginter, CEO of Callan Family Office. “Our work with Vanilla is designed to bring together the best of both technology and expertise to help families preserve wealth across generations. We are pleased to be a strategic collaborator in the evolution of Vanilla’s UHNW capabilities.”

Alongside product development, the partnership establishes a coordinated go-to-market strategy, including joint thought leadership, events and distribution efforts, designed to bring these capabilities to wealth management firms and family offices across the UHNW space.

Vanilla has served UHNW clients and their advisors since its founding, with the platform today underpinning some of the most complex estates in the country. This history and the depth of planning complexity Vanilla has built into its platform are precisely what brought Callan Family Office to the table.

"This is a space we've operated in from the beginning," said Farrell. "This partnership is about accelerating what we're already doing and going deeper on the capabilities that matter most to the families and advisors who live in this complexity every day."

Re-disseminated by Wealth and Society