Estate Planning Is 'The Next Frontier' for Advisors: Steve Lockshin

“Estate planning is moving to the forefront of the consumer’s mind,” says Steve Lockshin, the founder of the estate planning platform Vanilla.

His goal is to move it to the forefront of the financial advisor’s mind.

In a recent interview with ThinkAdvisor, the AdvicePeriod co-founder and principal argues that estate planning is “the next frontier. This is true for anybody who has any wealth at all.”

Lockshin, an early champion of high tech for advisors, discusses why he thinks estate planning will become “a staple” with financial advisors and why it is “an important family security issue.”

Vanilla’s software automates the process, making it easier for financial advisors to customize strategies at scale.

It can be used for clients at all asset levels, Lockshin says in the interview, and the firm’s client base includes both small RIAs and large financial institutions, like Vanguard.

Here are excerpts from our conversation:

THINKADVISOR: What should advisors be doing now about estate planning for clients?

STEVE LOCKSHIN: Paying attention: At the end of 2025, the current tax exemptions are due to sunset — basically get cut in half. So use it or lose it. 

Secondly, the massive wealth transfer from baby boomers to the next generation has started. Statistics aren’t good for advisors that don’t interact with the children of their clients.

Because by the time the second parent dies, they usually leave the [parents’] advisor and go to their own.

Why will “estate planning … become a staple with financial advisors,” as you said?

The next frontier is estate planning. This is true for anybody with any wealth at all.

What makes it “the next frontier”?

Advisors are using it as a differentiator. Advisors that were losing business to those who were handling estate planning became wise and began to focus on it. 

Estate planning is moving to the forefront of the consumer’s mind. With the pandemic, people were dying or thought they might; so putting their affairs in order became even more important.

And now there’s more and more articles and TV advertising about estate planning services.

But Vanilla, holistic in scope, is more than creating wills, trusts and other documents, isn’t it?

That’s a feature, but the core product is the facilitation of everything around estate planning. [This embraces] the client, financial advisor, CPA, lawyer and the client’s family.

Ultimately, it will be a place where, we hope, anyone related to a client’s financial condition will share information. 

We originally designed the product in Excel for our own clients. I wanted to automate it and put it online. As we got further, we decided there was a business there to share with advisors.

What’s Vanilla’s main objective?

To make advisors look great serving clients’ needs with respect to estate planning. 

Dying intestate can be very problematic to someone’s financial well-being. Estate planning is an important family security issue.

People need to be well prepared in the event of an untimely death.