Attendees stayed attentive throughout Today’s Wills and Probate’s inaugural Seminar looking at Preparing for Future Success at the Belfry Hotel and Resort in Birmingham. It was held on the 5th anniversary of the publication and attracted over 55 attendees.
Colum Smith, co-founder of McMillan Williams, opened the seminar with a look at preparing a Will Bank for an elegant exit, informing the audience that McMillan Williams’ most profitable department is now their wills and probate department. He puts some of the success down to a detailed, forensic approach to compiling will bank data.
Colum stressed that will banks can become an administrative and regulatory nightmare if they are not administered adequately and stated that when will banks are cleaned up they become eight to ten times more profitable.
A running theme throughout the seminar was the concept of adding non-legal services to build profitability.
Working out specific demographics, target regions, death rates and ages was considered vital when creating saleable will bank data.
Similarly, segmenting clients into specific groups is a crucial way of creating an accurate will bank. Firms have found clients in an ‘interesting family group,’ with siblings that may not be aware of one another for example, to be the most profitable.
Delegates were reminded that ‘data has power and data has value’ and creating a detailed bank using data intelligently will drive profitability upwards.
The sentiment of using data intelligently was a key theme emanating throughout the seminar. The morning’s opening panel discussion considered the ways of making a business in the wills and probate sector attractive to investors.
Panellists found growth, entering into new markets, diversifying services and a trend of offering non legal services to be the main influences of businesses seeking investment.
Much like the businesses entering Dragons Den, representatives of Farewill argued they chose investors for more than just financial backing, with expertise, experience and guidance attractive qualities to be gained from investors.
Other panellists viewed consumers and employees as important investors. The key requirements were clear: invest wisely in people, ensure you have the right management team in place and offer a customer focused business.
Carrie Caladine, of The Right Legal Group, offered key insights concerning staff creating value, claiming that staff want to see a return on their career investment through improved knowledge and experience. The Right Legal Group achieve this through encouraging training opportunities for all staff members, regardless of their role.
A sentiment endorsed by Alan Spencer, chairman of Trust Inheritance, who is proud to have grown his business organically, without investors, by recruiting people and nurturing their skills so their output has a qualitative impact on the business. Mr Spencer reinforced the belief that employing more staff creates a diverse environment with improved viewpoints and ideas which will ultimately help to move the business forward.
Outside investors were viewed with an element of trepidation by the panellists, with panel chair Simon McCrum, of McCrum Consulting, questioning the level of understanding investors have in the legal sector. When ‘investors are about numbers and not the vision,’ investors like banks may worry about the return.
Overall, legal service providers need to provide a quality service to avoid the race to the bottom. Investing in the right people, management and processes will enable a business in Wills, probate and estate administration to boast a superior product and will be able to charge accordingly.
With McMillan Williams defending their firm from at least one fraud attempt every hour, Jennifer Williams, of The Practical Vision Network, set up the final panel discussion by considering the murky world of safeguarding a business’ online presence by emphasizing the need to protect against email vulnerabilities, employee accidents and third party issues.
When 60% of all businesses will face a cyber attack at some point and could face the average financial cost of between £64,000 and £115,000, the scale of the problem became clear.
Alex Holt, of The Cashroom, believed the threat posed by third parties could be severe and highlighted that legal service businesses should ensure that any outside businesses they work with are certified with a cyber certification like Cyber Essentials.
Headline sponsor of The British Wills and Probate Awards Dave Newick of Arken.Legal (UK), urged delegates to ensure their business is protected from the inside out by creating solid cyber processes. Training staff to spot the warning signs of a scam email, ensuring staff have safe passwords and creating a healthy cyber security culture is vital to preventing data breaches.
As the threat of a recession looms, panellists insisted that creating an efficient business using effective technological solutions can help to weather any turbulent times ahead. Alex Holt described how the secure Portal service used by The Cashroom was used to organize tasks, protect client data and create a clear audit trail.
We will report further on the outcomes of the day in future features.
To enquire about future events in the sector contact press@todayswillsandprobate for more details.
