A new estate planning platform will help firms respond to demand for online private client services under their own brand without the expense of commissioning their own software, its creators say.
Ai Wills says it has developed the white-label platform for SME solicitors, will writers, estate planners, accountants, financial and mortgage advisers, estate agents and funeral directors, each of whom can present the software to clients under their own brand, on their usual domain and with their own bespoke pricing.
Founder Chris Fisher explained: “Almost every firm we speak to knows there is demand for online wills, LPAs and probate work. What they do not have is the time, the budget or the development resource to build a digital front door for it.
“Many client-facing firms are either turning enquiries away, referring them out and losing the relationship, or handling everything manually. We wanted to remove the technology barrier entirely so a firm can be live under its own brand in days rather than spending a year and a substantial budget building something themselves. The initial response to the service has been phenomenal.”
The platform offers three online revenue streams: will writing, lasting power of attorney and a probate quotation and referral system. It also offers what Ai Wills calls the Executor Toolbox, a standalone digital vault where users can log property, finance and utility details. A CRM and AI-assisted marketing automation and client engagement tools are also included.
The model was designed to answer a problem Fisher says he has seen repeatedly across the legal sector over the last 25 years. He explained: “Clients who arrange their mortgage, their insurance and their banking online increasingly expect to be able to start a will or an LPA the same way, at the point they think about it rather than at the next available appointment.
“Estate planning, by contrast, has remained heavily reliant on paperwork, appointment scheduling and manual follow up, and the gap between the two shows up as abandoned enquiries.
“The enquiry does not wait for office hours. People think about their will at 11 o’clock at night after a funeral or a health scare, and if there is nothing for them to do at that moment, most of them never come back to it. Giving someone a way to start there and then is the single biggest difference we see in conversion, and it is a demand issue rather than a technology one.”
The platform also includes a referral structure to connect businesses with specialist advisers. “Referral schemes usually fail for the same reason”, Fisher said.
“The introducer sends the case, hears nothing for three months, and stops sending cases. If you make the handover take 30 seconds and then show the introducer exactly where that client has got to, the referral relationship actually survives. That visibility matters as much to the adviser receiving the work as it does to the firm sending it.”
Further planned updates include a consultant view to allow advisers to deal with “more complex matters” within the system, a wider development focus on expanded estate administration tools, and deeper integrations with legal and financial data providers.
