Vanilla with Gene Farrell | E448

In this episode of FinTech Impact, host Jason Pereira interviews Gene Farrell, CEO of Vanilla, an estate planning platform built to help advisors deepen multigenerational client relationships by creating, managing, and analyzing estate plans. Farrell explains the company’s origins with founder Steve Lockshin, who turned a manual, time-intensive document-review process into software, then scaled it into a standalone business after raising a Series A led by Venrock in 2021. The conversation covers Vanilla’s client engagement tools like Estate Health Check, state-specific document building, and AI-driven analysis that flags gaps such as improperly executed documents, unfunded trusts, or outdated plans after interstate moves. Farrell also details why Vanilla was built for enterprise early—driven by clients like Vanguard—emphasizing security, role-based controls, and obfuscating PII from AI models, while staying focused on end-to-end estate planning depth rather than expanding into adjacent tools.

Episode Highlights:

00:00 Welcome to Fintech Impact

00:33 Future-Proof Ice Cream Banter

01:12 What Vanilla Does

01:58 How Vanilla Started

04:44 Gene Joins as CEO

06:15 Getting Clients Engaged

07:32 Estate Planning Explained

11:25 AI Document Analysis

12:43 Growing AUM and Family Ties

16:19 Attorney Network and Flexibility