A broken system
In life we have become demanding of the services and processes that we interact with daily, with high expectations of responsiveness, accessibility, and ease – even with the important suff. We want quick decisions, instant communication, process transparency and choices galore (on our terms). It’s the 21st century digitally native way.
Yet, in death we (or more specifically those we leave behind) are faced with a task that feels firmly rooted in the 20th century – administering someone’s estate. At a point where emotions are at their most strained, and we are perhaps at our most vulnerable, we are asked to take on a process that is long, arduous, fragmented, and frustrating.
Most people embark on this “mission” with a severe lack of understanding of what is involved, and only realise quite how stressful, time-consuming, expensive, and painful it can all be when they are deep into it. I hadn’t understood just how hard probate could be until I went through the process myself, and also watched a friend struggle with the death of his parents, in-laws and then his wife in quick succession. Even with help from good solicitors the whole process was a chore. Exizent was founded to try and make things better for all involved
Channelling technology
We spent many months talking with practitioners about what was involved in the process and what makes it complicated. Firstly, it is a very admin heavy process, secondly, it involves a spider’s web of different parties, and thirdly, it revolves around a lot of data.
We could see no significant technological developments in the area, particularly with modern software that helps practitioners handle their executry cases more efficiently, and certainly no universal solution to the problems families, executors, solicitors, and financial institutions were facing.
Whilst complicated, the team here at Exizent saw the clear potential to harness the technology readily available to develop tailored responses to the problems encountered by all.
The advent of cloud computing, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and the move towards Open Finance and open data have all converged at an exciting time to allow us to bring some long-awaited innovation to the sector.
The first ‘bereavement platform’
To make a tangible difference to the probate process, we wanted to address those three key issues - reducing admin, improving communication, creating a universal solution all centred on the better use of data.
Launched in late 2020, Exizent has been created specifically for professionals involved in managing the bereavement process within legal services firms and financial institutions. Whether you are supporting a client in their role as executor, or delivering full estate administration, Exizent is being developed to allow you to manage all aspects of the estate quickly and easily. We are working to connect the data used by legal services firms, institutions, and executors throughout a case. As an example, we recently launched our Estate Discovery feature in partnership with credit data firm Experian that helps locate liabilities and assets at the click of a button
This fully managed cloud-based system requires no installations, patches, or local IT maintenance and because it can be accessed remotely, users can securely manage all their probate cases anytime, from anywhere. As a result, it is becoming an integral part of the bereavement landscape helping to reduce uncertainty, increase speed and overall, make the process more straight forward for everyone.
How will Exizent help solicitors?
Exizent was and continues to be developed in conjunction with law firms and financial institutions working within probate to ensure it provides the solutions they need. Through the ‘Exizent Research Community’ members of the industry take part in regular research activities that help shape improvements to the Exizent service.
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