Anthony Belcher, Director General of the Society of Will Writers, recently spoke to David Opie on the Today’s Wills and Probate podcast. They covered the formation of the Society, its plans moving forwards, and the future of the will writing sector – including the all-important topic of regulation.
Anthony, the Society has lasted for 28 years, which is an incredible achievement. In some respects, it’s an indictment on the industry – which remains unregulated. What have been the successes and what do you think have been the failures over the past 28 years?
There’s really a lot of merit in what the Society has achieved over time. You’ve got to look at it in the respect that you if you go back right back to April 1994, what started as five business owners, like-minded individuals – they got together and thought, you know what? There’s a there’s a real need for something that is not only in the interests of the professionals, but also clients, consumers, the general public.
With legal services being dominated by the likes of solicitors, it’s been something which is a niche that’s really had to have been carved out over that time period.
You could suggest that will writing writing as a profession – or industry, whatever you want to call it – wouldn’t really be what it is if it weren’t for the Society to be honest.
I know we’re not the only membership organisation that’s out there, but in terms of steering things in the direction they’ve gone in, actually training people to, to go out and do the job and do it properly and ensure that consumers are getting the appropriate advice, the correct document, and making sure that they’re acting in their best interest, I think it’s the Society that’s really being the driving force behind that.
We’re currently sitting on nearly 1800 members. It’s a membership organisation – it’s entirely voluntary. There’s no regulation, but they’ve signed up to the framework that we put in place, our code of practice, our insurance requirements, training requirements.
They haven’t done that just for the sake of it. It’s not just so they can slap a logo on their website or, claim to be any better than anybody else or be something that they’re not. They’ve done it because they genuinely believe in what we do.
I described it as a membership organisation. I think in there you’ve described it as a membership organisation. You and I have chatted separately about this, but is it as much a training organisation as it is a membership organisation?
Absolutely. I like to look at it as a support network. We’re not a regulator and I think that’s where people start to muddle things slightly. What we what we impose is self-regulation.
People come on board because they as individuals know and believe that that is the correct thing to do to – to provide these services properly. But you’re absolutely right, it is only through training that you’re going to be able to do that to the best of your ability. You can’t go out and have some of the most personal and in-depth conversations with individuals that anybody will ever have [without training]. It’s everything they love, it’s everyone they love. It’s everything they care about, everything they own, and what they want to do with all of that. The will writer must be able to pick out all of the important points from that conversation and turn that into the appropriate advice and documentation for that individual.
You’ve got to learn how to do that properly. Anybody absolutely can set themselves up as a will writing business tomorrow and nobody could tell us not to. Nobody could tell us how to run it. Nobody could tell us what would be right or wrong. There’s no regulation. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to be any good at it.
What have been the failures or missed opportunities do you feel?
I think the thing that we’ve always been very bad with is being our own best-kept secret. Whether that’s because we just don’t shout enough about what we do, or whether that’s because we don’t engage enough with people – we’re not really sure.
Also, I think member involvement is certainly something which we need to improve on. I have to do right by the members of the Society, I have to act in their best interests. I can only do that effectively if I actually involve them in that decision making process. And so I think that’s something we’ve perhaps not been very good at historically.
What are the Society’s plans for the next three to five years?
We’ve focused very heavily these past few years on the recruitment side of the business, getting more members on board, training more people and helping the companies who are registered with us expand.
Moving forwards, we have two main goals. One is promoting the need for wills and estate planning to the public at large, and the other is making sure that the people who do it for a living and doing it properly.
You’ve talked about regulation in in the course of the conversation. What do you see happening in the will writing industry over the course of the next three 5-10 years, outside of your objectives?
We would be naive to think that regulation won’t one day happen. I think there is a possibility that it will be looked at again.
The conversations we’ve had over the last couple of years, the roundtables we’ve sat in on, the meetings we’ve had, the questions we’ve proposed to government… none of them necessarily allude to it happening.
Yet, when you look at what’s happening in the wider legal sector and in financial services, you can only help but feel a little bit like the walls are closing in around you.
It’s not necessarily that it’s a bad thing. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there really with your first question in that it’s an indictment of the industry. I think we have been able to get to the point we’ve got to because we haven’t had the regulation to worry about.
Sometimes, the difficulty with regulation is that it brings costs. It’s the higher costs of practising and operating as a regulated entity.
I think for many people, will writing is a very affordable career path because they haven’t necessarily got to worry about those sorts of things.
Regulation could potentially change that, but it’s not necessarily that it’s something that we wouldn’t embrace or that we don’t welcome.
I think what would be preferable is effectively what we’re already doing. It’s a form of licencing scheme.
One of the wider concerns that the government has is that consumers don’t necessarily know where to go for the legal services that they need, and there’s this belief that just because somebody provides legal services that they are a regulated individual.
What we expect will happen first is more of a centralised register of legal professionals following the conversations and discussions we’ve had.
Put more effort into the consumer education, the consumer advice side of things. Websites like legal choices, for example. More backing behind those, really just trying to help consumers make informed decisions about where they go for their legal services in the long run.
What we potentially expect is, if will writing itself becomes a reserved activity, then I think the scope needs to be widened in terms of the authorised persons to carry out that activity.
And that’s where bodies like us will come into play. I think the Society, again, with the framework we’ve already got in place, with the systems we already implement, the auditing procedures, the CPD requirements, insurance requirements, training requirements, all of what we do is already largely what our regulator would do anyway.
We’re not a million miles away from it. I just think the system that we’ve got, the scheme that we have in place is a less heavy-handed way of doing it.
I, the Society, and the vast majority of our members, would all likely prefer for things to stay the way they are.
There are perhaps some professions, or some within the legal sector, which would probably prefer to see will writers disappear overnight if they have their own way.
From our point of view, there are no widespread issues within the within the will writing sector. If you take our complaints figures for example, we got we got near on 1800 members. Over the course of 2021 we processed 14 complaints.
If you consider the complaints backlog at the Legal Ombudsman and some of the some of the issues which are being faced higher up there as well, what a lot of people will suggest is that, you know, it’s more important they get their own house in order before they look at anybody else is within the next three to five years.
Beyond that, I think that’s potentially when we we start having a look at it, but we as the Society are already involved in those conversations – we’re going to be part of that process.
Listen to the full podcast below