SmartWill, a fledgling online will platform launched by CliqTech just over 15 months ago, has experienced a dramatic increase in activity as people become more concerned about mortality and the status of their estates amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
"It's always been pretty good, but since April this year it's been crazy. At one stage our activity over April and May was 300% more, compared to the same period last year," says CliqTech CEO Zale Hechter.
Hechter says this increased activity consisted of sign-ups for the SmartWill service. "We anticipate the current trend for increased demand for digital wills to remain robust for the foreseeable future."
CliqTech, launched two years ago, is the brainchild of Hechter, who established it as a one-stop service for clients who wanted personalised wills and who may have complicated estates.
He brought on board close friend Champ Thekiso, whose company Thekvest acquired a 51% interest in Hechter's MZC Holdings, which in turn acquired a 32.5% stake in what was soon to be called CliqTech.
At the same time CliqTech partnered with James Perris's Tribe Investment Assets, which bought a 32.5% stake in the group, and empowerment company Imvelo, which bought a 35% interest.
Thekiso, who is chair of CliqTech, says the idea behind SmartWill was prompted by two personal family losses that Hechter faced and his experience of a protracted delay in settling the estate of a family member.
The two say the death of a loved one is traumatic and there should be an easier way for people to complete the necessary documents for the estate online and have access to advice, including legal and insurance issues.
"You can imagine in that time of trauma you are mourning and all of a sudden you cannot close that chapter [of your life] properly," says Thekiso.
"Growing up in an environment where poverty is real from a black family perspective, you spend a lot of time on insurance, and parents sacrifice for retirement and make sure they work hard to ensure their kids are taken care of, and then you make one small mistake around how your will is structured and you trap all of that legacy in terms of transferring it upon your death," he says.
Perris, who is also a CliqTech director, says anyone can get a template of a will from a local stationer or ask their bank to draw one up, but the more complicated your estate, the harder it is to complete it correctly so that there aren't problems down the line.
"What CliqTech does, it takes a very complicated and professional industry that's quite exclusive and simplifies it. If you don't get it right, you can invalidate your claim on any estate," says Perris.
For example, he says, a person may buy a basic will template but then mistakenly get one of the beneficiaries of that document to sign it as a witness.
When the person dies, the beneficiary who signed the document will not be able to inherit from the estate.
Hechter says SmartWill provides a professional "executor service" so that it's not a "template will at all".
"It takes all the person's details and uses algorithms to create a personal will. You also have a legal team that is checking the will and you have got people available 24 hours a day to provide the service."
Hechter says that once the will has been completed online, it will then go through a review process in which the group's legal team checks it and may decide to add a clause or change an element of it.
SmartWill's medium-term goal is to "put a million wills in the hands of South Africans", says Perris.
At the moment there are 2,500 customers on the SmartWill platform.
SmartWill has also partnered with financial services group FedGroup Life to launch an insurance cover product for any shortfalls resulting from the costs of winding up an estate.
