#48 Geoffrey Harmuth – Transcript

Louis van der Merwe
Welcome to another episode of Financial Planners, South Africa. Today in the studio I have with me Jeffrey Amarth. Jeffrey is the co founder and CEO of Lifedocs is also a chartered accountant. And I’m very excited to have someone that shares a passion for technology, and specifically bringing technology into financial services in such a time we desperately need it. Jeff, thanks so much for joining me today.

Geoffrey Harmuth
Thank you, Louis, I’m really happy to be here.

Louis van der Merwe
Let’s jump into what Lifedocs does. You know, we stumbled upon it when you were on on one of our friends shows brunch or that way which was brilliant, really enjoyed it and financial has this way of always finding something new. But tell us this kind of origin story of life Doc’s? How did it come about?

Geoffrey Harmuth
Yeah, so my co founder, who is actually the CTO during COVID, had a family member that unfortunately passed away. And during this time, they they really, really battled with winding up the state or getting anything ready for getting their state’s execution state process going. And eventually, what it led to was just a lot of pain and frustration around both the process and the documentation needed in order to to get this family member. We get to spend members estate executed. And long story short, four years down the line, they they still haven’t, or three years down the line, they they still haven’t managed to, to wind up the estate. And one of the fundamental problems that he found and discovered was just lack of documentation and understanding where this person was in their life when they passed away. And he then said, you know, I’m sick of this, I need to I need to make a plan and then decided that he’s going to create a vault that’s going to help store all his important documentation for him and his family, and then say to himself, but why the Why can’t I use this to help other people as well. And at the time, I’d recently just sold sold our business. And I was in a bit of a transition phase. And he called me up and said, Jeff, listen, I’ve got this, I’ve got this idea. Do you want to come on board? And yeah, I mean, that’s and the rest is history. From there. We we iterated, worked on the project and got to and got to the point of where it is now. And yeah, it’s been a really, really good journey.

Louis van der Merwe
They say the best technology starts with scratching your own edge. And what you’re saying is that your co founder, you know, had this need to simplify the deceased estate administration process. And it’s, I think, for someone in South Africa, it gets complex really quickly, you know, what’s the type of feedback that you’re hearing from your users around losing someone and around like gathering information, essentially prior to launching? livestocks?

Geoffrey Harmuth
Yeah. So I think the the fundamental problem that we have is that there’s really little education around what it means to be a state ready or what it means to so if you had to ask the question is if you had to kick the bucket to pass away today, do you have all your affairs in order? And that’s kind of the the question we are we we’ve wrapped around the problem of being estate ready and if you ask that question to 90% of people Everyone’s going to say, I don’t know what you’re talking about or No, but I have a plan, you know, everyone’s got a plan or they’ve got, you know, a few documents here a few documents there. Things Are, are in a safe things are there, it’s, it’s messy, it’s just a very messy process. And what we found is that is through our initial discussions with with people is by asking that simple question of are your state ready, but open up a huge can of worms, because then then you got on the road of the world. And then when you start to the world, and you know, and the moment you do a bit of research on the world, almost everyone in South Africa knows that 70% of people don’t have wills, which is, which is a fundamental problem. It’s a huge problem. So and that’s just one part of the of the pie. If you if you go into people that own assets, and their own houses, their own vehicles, they’ve got guns, they’re good jewelry, they’ve got all these items that they’ve got, but they don’t have a plan for it and haven’t documented where stuff is for it. So yeah, I suppose the what we what we realized and the feedback that that we got, ultimately came down to, we need to guide people to understand the process of what it means to be a state ready so that if something happens, they can they can have peace of mind that that the estate will be wrapped up really quickly. And that’s and that’s our, our function. And our goal is to is to accelerate that process.

Louis van der Merwe
So Jeff, you taking this kind of quite a difficult concept, you know, you’re saying it’s all these different pieces that play in together. And you’ve managed to simplify that through essentially an onboarding process into livestocks. Right? When someone goes through a wizard, they pick what items are relevant to them, and then they’re prompted to upload it. What hiccups? Have you seen it come about with your users through this process? Do people really know what it is that they should be gathering?

Geoffrey Harmuth
Yeah, so really a really good question. And basically, the, the wizard is really easy to answer. So people, I’ve got no problem going through the wizard process, they actually love it, because it prompts them, it gets him into a position where they have to weather think about certain things. And it’s quick, it’s easy to do. And then once the vault is has been populated, and they see how much information is actually required in terms of getting themselves a stage ready, that’s where they’re where they kind of start to say, Oh, wow, I didn’t realize actually need so much. And they kind of get the jitters. And then they and then they get to get back a little bit of a little bit of a fright. And then they say, Okay, I really need to get on this. And then you have two different types of people, right, you have the people that are really good at managing their affairs, they got all their documents ready. Those are the guys that spend the next three hours uploading everything, and they get to state really within within hours. And then you have the people that really, really want to be a state ready answer all the questions get themselves to a point where they just need to upload the documents, but then kind of take their time uploading documents. And yeah, it takes a long time for them to get into the groove of scanning documents in uploading it and making sure that it’s on the system. So I suppose in terms of the hiccups, it’s the physical interaction of the end user uploading documents into the system that that does take some time. But hopefully, and what we’ve seen is through nudges, we, we we are able to then go and say okay, you need to start uploading x y Zed. Yeah, so does the hiccups. And yeah,

Louis van der Merwe
I think I went through a very similar experience, you know, just uploading my documents like, Oh, yes, I do have this some way. And then it takes 10 minutes to go in my inbox and go and find it. And that probably means that it’s not very well organized. It’s taken care of, but it’s just not in one neat place. Seeing that this is a podcast for financial planners, you know, where do we draw that line between what falls into the realm of financial planning, and essentially the responsibility of the financial planner versus the responsibility of the client, from someone looking in from the outside at our industry? You know, do you think there’s a healthy healthy balance between what the financial planet takes on versus what the client takes on?

Geoffrey Harmuth
Yeah. So what I’ve seen, and I’m not an expert in this industry, per se, but you know, I’ve done a lot of interviews, and I’ve spoken to a lot of experts in this industry and a lot of financial planners, through the process of discovering, you know, certain problems that you’re trying to solve for. And what I’ve realized is that the the space is changing, and it’s changing. I would say that it started changing slowly, but I would say now, just off the COVID is changing quite fast in that. The the financial planner is now needs to apply a much more holistic approach to how they deal with their clients and get a lot more personal with them. So generally, I would say in the past, and I mean, you can correct me if I’m wrong, but it was all about getting a client pushing a product and And you know, then, then that product should take care of the customer when they when they pass on, or if, if there’s a an event that triggers a insurance claim, or whatever the case is. So that’s kind of the history, that’s changing to an approach now where you take the person, and you hold them by the hand, and you and you actually guide them, because people are really not financially literate, and they really are not in a position to think for themselves around these things. So the financial planner really has to go and look at this person in detail holistically and say, Okay, this is your position. And I would say also extended out of that is, perhaps their family, as well as to say, This is who you are, this is, this is what your family looks like, these are your goals, let’s let’s make it all together, when with that comes a sense of responsibility around your estate plan, and how to make sure that your your legacy is taken care of. Now, I would off the bat, say it’s the responsibility of the customer, or the end user or the or the financial advisors customer to go ahead and make sure that their documents are in place, right, that’s, that’s the, that’s the, the real, that’s where everyone kind of thinks people will do it on their own. But what we found is that if the financial planner actually guides them, not just them and gives them a little bit of assistance, it goes a long way in them taking care of their own affairs as well. So I think it needs to be a blend a good mix of nudging, helping and guiding, as well as doing a few things here and there for them. And then you have this real transfer of of, um, use the word love, because I think it’s really important in today’s in today’s age, where if if the financial planner or the, or the estate planner, a plausible love to his customer, then they’ll get the reciprocation in terms of this customer, giving them what they need as well. So, yeah, I really think that it should be a hybrid approach, the responsibility lies with both, but it’s not leaning more towards the financial planner to take the hand of the customer and guide them down that journey.

Louis van der Merwe
I love that. And we see more and more of these implementation partners, you know, not just for the implementation of a financial product, which like you’re saying, that is part of what financial planning used to be. But it’s now saying, how do we get it past that point? How do we get it where actually someone can sleep better at night, not just knowing, oh, there’s insurance, but everything’s organized and in a place for the day? Not if, when I die? You know, I think that’s, it’s a difficult topic to talk to people about death, you know, how have you found these interactions do Do people just want to run away and, and kind of avoided at all cost? Or the other kind of starting to engage in the conversations and saying, Well, you know, maybe COVID brought that to light? Yeah, so

Geoffrey Harmuth
spot on. I think and this kind of leads off on runs off the back of mental health, you know, people were meant to help us out to boob before COVID. Now, when you talk about mental health, everyone is kind of understanding and, and lends it Yeah, or a shoulder or wears a bit of advice around the topic. And it’s not taboo anymore, you know, you you’re not going to go to the loony bin if you do talk about mental health. So, in in the same in the same note, because COVID has such a has had a devastating impact on on people’s families with the, with so many people having passed away, the discussion around preparing for death is it’s a lot easier these days. It’s still not easy, but it is easier. And I think it’s also what we’ve noticed is there certain trigger points in a person’s life, that that will guide a conversation around death a lot easier. And these things are, for example, let’s say you’ve just had a loved one that’s passed away, it immediately makes you think about this, because you you’re in that moment, and you’re in that frame of mind. Then if you’ve just had a child, you, you want to get into a position where you want to take care of your child. And if something happens to you, you know, I want to make sure my child is taken care of. And there’s, you know, there’s lots of these various different trigger points that allow for the conversation to flow a lot easier. And I think once you’ve had the conversation, and you’ve engaged with the person on this topic, and you’ve given them peace of mind, in terms of what they need, it’s a lot easier, then they feel a lot more comfortable going forward opening up about anything else within that realm.

Louis van der Merwe
Like you mentioned earlier, it’s kind of holding their hand and taking them through this process to implement and getting estate ready. You know, we spoke about the estate readiness score that you guys were developing. Can you share a little bit more about Add what that is, and you know what goes into that school?

Geoffrey Harmuth
Yeah. So basically, what we found is that having the vault where you’re going to upload all your documents, it solves, it solves the problem of getting all the documents on file, but it doesn’t show the the end user or the customer, where they are in the process or, or doesn’t give them a target or a carrot, per se, to, to kind to get them to the endpoint. So what we what we kind of did was is we said, Let’s gamify the estate readiness process. So and and basically, what that means is, we then give a rating and a score to each really important document that sits in the vault. And so really basic is if you have a vehicle, we’re going to ask you for your, your registration documents, or, or, or your insurance documents, and so forth. And what what that does is by the fact that by virtue of the fact that you have a vehicle, you’ve got important documents that that you need, and that score then changes dynamically based on all the important documents that that you need of the of the assets and liabilities that you currently have. So so it’s a dynamic score, it gives you the ability to, if you get to 100% of state readiness, you then have peace of mind. So it’s kind of if I’m at 100%, I got peace of mind. So it’s trying to just gamify give a score, say this is where you are. And it actually adds a lot of value to the end user and the advisor as well. Because now the advisor has a an overview score for all their customers, that they can see the change in the score they now have that can track averages in the score to see, you know, how is that really are their customers? And I think historically this has never happened before. No, no financial planner or or fiduciary firm has the ability to answer the question is of your 1000 clients? How many of them are state ready? And yeah, hopefully we can solve for that problem. And that seems to be received quite well. So far,

Louis van der Merwe
you’re kind of How worried should you be the score tells you is the is the justification for you lying awake at night, and at the same time as a practice owner, just the fact that you have those metrics now to say, well, the quality of my clients estate planning and estate readiness, because for me, it is a essential piece of estate planning, you know, you can have someone’s liquidity, and you can have the insurance components. But the day when that person passes away, and you have to deal with the spouse or the partner, it’s really difficult. You know, coming into this meeting, I was sitting completing forms for a meeting with a client that lost her husband two weeks ago. And just dealing with these things are immensely difficult. I’d love to hear maybe if you have some stories about where someone has used this in action, I’m not sure you the product is relatively new, has there been an experience with someone has passed away? And they’re having to gather the documents from life docs, or tell us a little bit if if you have any of that information with you?

Geoffrey Harmuth
So luckily, that’s it’s weird. It’s kind of we so no one has has passed away with the love docs account yet. So to answer your question, but the I’m quite, it’s weird. If I can say I’m excited for for the event to actually happen. I’m not excited for somebody to pass away. But I’m excited to see that when it does happen. How laft ox has helped out in this process? And I’m pretty confident it will. And yeah, it’s going to be that’s going to be my my, my real product validation test is, is once when somebody does pass away, they have a lockbox account, how did our process and how did our platform assist the family, the adviser, etc, in terms of winding up the estate? So unfortunately, no one has passed through as yet or fortunately. But yeah, as I suppose we have tried to cater for every eventuality within that process. And I think it should that should really assist with the with that.

Louis van der Merwe
Well, Jeff, I think we’re fortunate to know exactly what the process will follow when someone passes away. You know, we know what documentation the master requires. We know what documentation we need to work through to gather information. And the biggest thing we see is just that financial organization, knowing which debit orders came off automatically versus which payments worked off. One of the things that surprise people that they thought oh, I didn’t really think that I need to note that in my my stack of files. Is there. Is there anything that maybe surprised you or some of your users?

Geoffrey Harmuth
Yeah, so I would say one of the one of the funniest stories is goes around DSTV and TV licences and a lot of the people that deal in in with fiduciary or the fiduciary firms and people in this data Estate Planning space, they they always say that the that the monster that sitting underneath everything is you can reopen an estate for for 230 Rand TV license account. And so so they’re always they’re always want to know, you know where what’s your TV license number so that’s the one thing. And then DSTV is is is pretty pretty keen on closing your DSTV account the moment they hear that you pass away. So it’s it’s here raising when the when the spouse is sitting at home and all they want to do is watch about a TV and they can’t do anything because the SU is going to close that off. So yeah. And then from from client side when when they come into the platform, and they don’t realize how much how many documents they need at all. Mostly, it’s surprised it surprised them around the marriage contract. And a lot of people don’t know how they married. So So that’s that just that surprised me because I’ve only been married for five years, but I still now have married. So I think a lot of people forget how they’re married. And they go on there. And and you ask the question, you know, are you married in a lot of community of property? And that kind of after thinking yeah, so So that’s surprised me. And then just the the amount of documentation surrounding a house if you own a house, there’s there’s a lot of documents that are needed for for that. So people say Wow, do you really need all this all this information? And firearms, firearms is a real is a real kicker as well. So yeah, people that own firearms don’t realize that, that you that that firearm license, and that kind of competency is important as well. But yeah, there’s, I think everyone kind of gets their own little shock, depending on on how many, or how complex their their lives are. But also what it does is it opens up everything. So when you once you’re done answering the questions, and you’ve unbolted yourself, you have this, this huge amount of things that that you wouldn’t normally have thought about. So for example, if you have business interests and trusts and and those types of things, so you wouldn’t normally have thought that would be part of your estate. But it becomes super important when you when you do pass away.

Louis van der Merwe
Jeff, how well does the training for Chartered Accountants prepare you to become an executor to administer an estate because obviously you can be registered as an executor. But I’m just curious, as a certified financial planner, we have a lot of training around the state liquidity, but very little training around what does it actually take to be an executor and deal with all these different things. So I’d love to hear from you about the training that you’ve had.

Geoffrey Harmuth
Yeah, so I think it’s pretty good actually. And the reason for that is not so much around the documentation that you need to submit to the master and so on and so forth. It comes more around the preparation of the liquidation and distribution accounts, you know, studying and studying finance it gives you it gives you a real deep understanding of assets, liabilities, income and expenses. So, so kind of getting that financial position of the person that has passed away, then obviously when you when you look at companies and trusts we really dive into that in detail as well as part of our studies. And a lot of a lot of the chartered accountants out there are dealing with companies every single day and tax as well. So when you when it comes to to doing following up on tax returns, getting all your tax up to date, it really helps to have that background in finance. So yeah, on on the deceased estate side, and as executor I think you I really we we are quite well prepared from from that point of view. But on the estate planning side, I think that’s more more where you guys come in and and, you know, curate that estate plan. And and because you have a deep understanding of product, we kind of really good on the financial side and collecting data, you know, being being auditors. That’s that’s what we tried to do is connect all the dots, find the stuff let’s go hunting for for documentation information that counts. Yeah. So so that’s that’s kind of why I think a chartered accountant makes makes for a good executor.

Louis van der Merwe
We’ve seen more and more people use this kind of concept of let’s call it the brain trust or a group of advisors, right? You’d have your accountant and your attorney and your financial planner, and maybe an insurance agent and have have this group. How does livestock account for these multiple people that might be involved in the estate administration, but also dealing with the people that are left behind?

Geoffrey Harmuth
Yeah, very good question. So, I suppose what it comes down to is, if you had to look at left docks as a as a central place where the seas can kind of upload all his documents and important information, then maintain it then, you know, on on passing or even during his lifetime, he’s able to Create contacts and share documents, you know, at anytime, with with people that are important to him. And I suppose these these people are going to be his accountant, his lawyer, his executor, some spouses and so forth. So, so we’ve we’ve created the platform in such a way that this person can connect all his important people into his laptops accounts. And then he has the the ability to share on his own terms, whatever he wants with whomever. And then on the on the on the other end for the advisors, they they are able then to also collaborate with with their customers that are left docks, customers, as well through through the platform by so for example, if you’ve just completed a wall on behalf of your customer, you can go and upload that will into his vault, he will then get a notification and say, and it’ll say, Dear Peter, Louis, here has gone and upgraded the world on your behalf, do you accept the world, you want to review it first. And basically, what we’re doing is, is we’re giving the power of the data and, and the, and the data aggregation sets with the end user. And that’s, that’s kind of the core of our product from a privacy point of view. And we believe that the end users are the traits of their of their data. So yeah, I suppose to answer your question, it is possible to connect everybody, you can connect loved ones into into laptops platform as well. And then also with our depth report settings, you then able to dictate how you want your account to be disseminated when you do pass on, through your Emergency Contacts. And, and whether you want your account deleted after a certain amount of days, so So we’ve tried to be as flexible as possible. But I do think that, that it’s up to it’s up to the end user to decide who he wants to share his personal information with any sensitive information. And then hopefully, once this process starts, when the person does pass on, everyone can come into the laptops ecosystem set, okay, he has the treasure chest of everything we need, let’s all talk to each other. So yeah, I think I think it’s a good playground for all these different professionals as well as the the end customer to, to go and, and, and collaborating for sure.

Louis van der Merwe
You know, this concept of the end user being in control of the information, and the data has been playing out over a number of years, you know, in the banking space, we have open banking, we haven’t really seen that in the insurance in the investment space, it seems like the providers are holding on to the information, you know, sometimes they share it with your financial planner, or your advisor. But very rarely can a end client transport a transactional based data between different providers. And you’re kind of facilitating that now in the fiduciary or the state space and call that needs help the end user have control of the documents and move that around. Why would someone not just use a shared Dropbox or a Google Drive account as opposed to live docs?

Geoffrey Harmuth
Yeah, so really good question that gets asked quite a lot. And my the easy answer to this is, it’s it’s an analogy. So I, I kind of look at it as Dropbox, Google Drive is like an attic or a garage. Everyone dumps everything in there. It’s always messy. It’s, you go into anyone’s garage, they they literally Chuck anything in there, then they’ll maybe go once every two years and go and try and deliver the organization and see what’s going on. We we have gone through through the process of saying, we are a storage facility, yes, but we help you understand what is important. And we guide you through the process of taking this important information and only giving a lead uploading, what is what is really important. And we’ve packaged it nice and neatly for you. And we wrap it around the net estate readiness score. So we don’t want everything from you. We only want the important stuff because that’s that’s what’s going to get your state ready. And yeah, that’s that’s that’s the, that’s the fundamental difference between between us and a normal generic storage provider, is we guide people through the process and we tell them what’s important because they don’t know, you know, if if I just said to you go and go and drop all your important documents into into Google Drive, I can assure you that will give you probably on a stage reading a score of about 40 Maybe even Yeah, because you don’t actually know what what you need. So we ask the questions, we we find out where you are in your life what you have. And then and then we tell you, Okay, this is important for that. Yeah,

Louis van der Merwe
it’s bringing that context. Right. So it’s not just data becomes information that saying, Okay, this is what’s relevant to you. You don’t have to worry about a trust deed. If you don’t have a trust, you don’t have to worry about that firearm licenses if you don’t have it. Do we have on the roadmap, a notification function to just let everyone know Hey, I’ve passed away like is that because it seems like that is one of the one of the most different Got processes to actually start kicking off that and, you know, even just notifying family and friends?

Geoffrey Harmuth
Yeah. So yeah, within the platform, there is a section called Death report settings where if you if you select or if you create a contact and that contact is an emergency contact there, then get notified that are in emergency contact. And if they report that you are have passed away, we then fire off an email to you saying, hey, Louis, Have you passed away. So just to make sure that there’s no fraud involved. And if a certain time has passed, and these are settings, you can adjust at your own terms. So if a certain amount of time has passed, and you haven’t responded to us, we then go go ahead and and open up your vault to to your, all your Emergency Contacts, as well as also shared documents that you’ve chosen to share with people upon your death. So if you do upload a document, let’s say for example, it’s a wish, a couple of death wishes, and you want to share it with a specific individual upon your death, that will then get fired off upon your death. So, so we’ve, we’ve tried to cater for for that scenario, as well. And then, one, one important feature that that we are exploring now, and it’s becoming a little bit easier as we, as we go down the road of finding our third party data aggregators is we’re able to check with the Department of Home Affairs, what your, what your deceased estate, what your deceased status is, a little bit of nuances around implementation, but it’s looking pretty positive in terms of as being able to verify your, your, your live status. And what’s quite nice is most hospitals these days are linked directly to Home Affairs. So the moment they issue a, a death certificate, and pretty much updates kind of live with the department Home Affairs. So yeah, as far as that tech evolves, and it becomes a little bit more robust. Generally, dealing with the Department of Home Affairs is is a bit tricky. So as that becomes a little bit more, more robust, and it’s it’s very accurate, will then implement that as well. So then, then you don’t actually have to do anything. And we’ll know when you’ve passed away, and then we can go and fire off everything automatically as well.

Louis van der Merwe
Jeff, how do people manage their social media accounts and their passwords around this time of death? You know, is there an elegant way where people gain access to important to can’t even just things like emails? Or should it just be blocked, and you have to deal through the various channels?

Geoffrey Harmuth
Yeah, so it’s actually really difficult. I know, I know, some platforms such as Facebook, and Google and Twitter, and some of the bigger platforms allow you to, or allow a loved one to go in and turn the counter to a legacy account, or whatever the case may be. But I think it’s really, really important, especially if you’ve got a big social presence, and you’ve got a lot of different accounts like Blackwill do, I mean, I must have about 100 passwords sitting sitting in in my Google account. So I think what’s very what’s the prudent approach is to gather the really important social media accounts or your digital platform accounts, and load them into life docs. And what we’ve done is we allow you to add a digital access or a digital platform in there, and we give you the option of leaving breadcrumbs. So we don’t specifically say to you put your username and password in, rather put on there, this is how you’re going to this is what I want you to do. And this is how you’re going to access it, whether you want to leave username password in there, it’s up to you, it’s obviously going to be pretty safe. But we’ve we’ve gone through the approach of leaving breadcrumbs rather. So if you decide to write all your social media, passwords and usernames on a piece of paper, stick around your desk, which, which I don’t suggest is a great idea. Then just leave you the breadcrumb and say, Listen, all my passwords are sitting under my desk, on a piece of paper. So So we’ve we’ve gone with that sort of Omni approach of saying, do whatever makes you feel comfortable. But the the ability to do that within laptops is there. And I think it’s really important that people consider this. And a lot of people said, don’t don’t consider that. You know, how did that unlock my phone? If I pass away, you know, and it’s linked to my fingerprint. So it’s linked to my face is linked to my fingerprint. So are there any other ways of going about this? So yeah, it’s kind of it’s very necessary to, to actually think about this. And, yeah, hopefully, we’ve, we’ve corrected with, with the laughs Doc’s ecosystem.

Louis van der Merwe
It’s a real balance, having the practicality of someone needs to be able to see messages and emails, and then also having security and someone not abusing it at a time when, you know, maybe they shouldn’t be looking at your messages and your emails. How often should clients be revisiting the estate readiness?

Geoffrey Harmuth
So this is historically if you if you had to go back 20 years you’d find that a person generally had a pretty stable job, they had a retirement annuity with the company, you know, everything was pretty, pretty stable, the price of milk stayed the same for five years, things, things kind of just plotted along on a predictable trajectory. And that’s why the old you know, read file with a with a checklist on a piece of paper kind of work, where you get all your documents together, once your family knows that you worked for this one company, this one company looked after you and you had an IRA, and you were with, let’s say, for example, old mutual for the last 30 years, it’s really easy to do and you’ve been in the same bank, then then you kind of keep all this data together. And you don’t have to revisit it very often, because nothing much changes. These days, Things are hectic, it’s crazy, people are changing jobs every every year, every two years. It’s even faster. Now. It’s actually some, some people are changing jobs every six months. It’s and you you kind of need to, I would say in the modern era, and I hope I’m correct, yeah. But I would say at least every six months, it’s something that you need to look at. From and not everything, I think your your will yearly for sure. But all you other things, I think every six months, just just get to a point where you were keeping everything up to date. Because, you know, you’re buying and selling a car a lot. If you look at how busy we buy cars is, then you must know people are turning over cars quite fast. So back in the day your your dad or drivers used to to camera you for for 20 years. Now you’re stopping at your GTI every every six months. Yeah, you, you got to keep track of that stuff. It’s important.

Louis van der Merwe
There’s a saying in the transitions planning. When life changes, money changes, and when money changes, life changes. And so it’s just a good financial habit to as you’re doing these things, as you’re maybe doing your taxes or updating your budget, you know, just going into life docs and becomes part of your financial housekeeping, I guess.

Geoffrey Harmuth
100% Yeah, exactly. And what what we what we’re doing as well is with the estate readiness score, is if you don’t update certain information, the statement score actually starts decreasing, based on time as well. So you some people think that they can get 100% of state ready, and they’ll stay like that. But yeah, we’ve, we’ve caught on to that trick. And we trying to say no, this is something that you need to update often. So if you haven’t updated your Well, you haven’t confirmed that still, it’s still relevant, then we start start getting on your state readiness score. And hopefully that’s a that’s a good carrot to to keep people to keep people coming back. And also, yeah, it’s kind of our journey we were going to work with, with, with our end users with advisors to try and find out what’s the what’s the optimal way of keeping people to stay tuned, because no one wants to do it. It’s something that it’s always at the bottom of your list, because no one thinks that they’re going to die in the next day, next month, next year. So you really need to engage with people. That’s why we’ve gamified the steadiness score. Yeah, just engage with people around this to make sure that, you know, they’re constantly a state really,

Louis van der Merwe
one day people not going to ask what your credit score, but they’re gonna say, what’s your readiness score? Are you Yeah, do you have a good school?

Geoffrey Harmuth
Exactly. And other, I suppose that, that could maybe benefit executives, especially firms that are providing executive ship on wills, you know, I can give them comfort in knowing that that’s the fees that they’re going to charge could could maybe either be supplemented by the state readiness score, or just to assist them in the administration at the end of the day, because that’s a huge process to to administrate in a state. And I don’t think people understand that. It’s not easy. It’s a tough, it’s a really, really tough thing to do. So, yeah, hopefully we can we can get to assisting with that, in a big way, change, change the mindset and change that change the the landscape that people have been operating in for the last? I don’t know, I’m pretty sure this industry has been the same for last 20 years or so.

Louis van der Merwe
Yeah. And don’t forget the impact that you have on the loved ones that are left behind, because we deal with those ones putting their lives back together. And yes, the executive would find a way to deal with it because they deal with it every day. But for the spouse or the partner that’s left behind. That’s really where the difference comes in. Essentially, for for our client base, making sure that they have that peace of mind, Jeff, you guys are really moving, you know, the fiduciary industry into into a new era. And I think this is what this show is all about, you know, the positive evolution of financial advice. What’s next for live docs? Is there anything that you can share with us that you’re very excited that that might be coming?

Geoffrey Harmuth
Yes. So our next big project is In the, in the automation space. So we we our goal is to try and get people to be a state right. So onboard themselves, get them to be a state ready to run about 70% Within a matter of minutes. So and how we want to achieve that is we have some third party data aggregators that that are going to allow us access to the API. And basically, if you log on to life docs, and you sign up and you’re onboard yourself, we’re going to ask you in a salary, do you give us consent to go into the market and find all your data for you, and then, and then we will then be able to pull in all your debit orders, we’re able to pull in your vehicles, we’re able to pull in your insurance, and so forth, and so forth. So we’re really excited about that. It’s a monumental task. But we’ve met the journey, we’ve got the partners, it just, it’s a function of developing. And, yeah, and iteration. So that hopefully will come out. I would probably say, early next year, from in, in a in a beta testing phase. And yeah, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll really excited about that. Because that’s going to start adding huge amounts of value to to the end user for, for them to get themselves to stage really a lot faster. And all they have to do then is fill in the blanks where, where needed.

Louis van der Merwe
There’s a saying in software industry that you you can say which quarter, but you can’t say which sounds very clear to you. You’re committed to that.

Geoffrey Harmuth
Yeah. Yeah, I’ve really had to come to terms with the with saying like q1, q2, q3 q4. So the tech space is a really tough space to navigate, I tend to think about things happening a lot faster than then my co founder, who’s, who’s the actual developer, so he has to kind of hold me back and put me pulled me up the reins to say, Listen, just calm down in terms of your promises. But we were super excited. And and we knew moving on quite fast.

Louis van der Merwe
For people that would like to get a little bit more information or just connect with you. What’s the best way to do that?

Geoffrey Harmuth
Yes, I suppose three ways. The first is you can email me, Jeffrey, at laughs docs, that’s Yetzirah. And I’ll respond as quickly as I can. And then on my LinkedIn, I’ve got a LinkedIn profile as well. So you can get ahold of me there. And lastly, I think if you if you sign up onto onto life doc to use the platform, and you do have any questions or or any concerns, you’re able to within the app, you know, raise, raise any any bugs or issues there and contact us there and all our contact details on the website as well. So you can give us a call you can you can drop us an email. Yeah, we, we try our best to keep in touch with all our customers and get get feedback as often as possible and try and get as much as much information to help us improve the platform. At any stage. Yeah.

Louis van der Merwe
Brilliant. Thank you so much for being here today and sharing this conversation with me. I wish you all the best.

Geoffrey Harmuth
Thank you, Louis. I really, really appreciate it.