Protecting your assets
With the technological advancements in our daily lives, many of us don’t notice that it’s becoming easier than ever to create and own digital and financial assets.
The examples are numerous. The fintech revolution created many neobanks, online trading platforms, and insurtech companies, which make it very easy to open a new bank account, buy a life insurance policy, invest in stocks, or become an angel investor.
In addition to this, the increasing number of expats globally strengthens that tendency.
When people move to work in another country:
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- they open a local bank account,
- have a local retirement plan and pension insurance, and
- take out local insurance.
This new reality of dynamically changing, numerous, and complex digital, physical, and financial assets makes it very difficult for people to protect them.
1. How will your loved ones know about each of your assets?
2. How will they identify and locate them?
3. How will they get access to them, especially if digital wallets and online accounts have passwords and access codes?
For many families across the world, this becomes a serious problem. The continuously rising value of unclaimed assets, more than $100B in the USA alone, is a vivid indication of that. These are funds that stay in banks, insurance companies, and other organizations instead of reaching the rightful beneficiaries when the asset owners pass away.
Digital Will to the rescue
Digital wills offer a quick and easy solution to people wishing to protect their assets and their legacy.
Through digital will online services, people can follow a few easy steps and their will is automatically generated.
Many states in the USA and globally have already approved digital wills as an alternative to traditional paper wills.
Traditional wills have many disadvantages:
- Wills on paper need to be stored physically, which makes it very difficult for family members to keep track of the location of the will. (Imagine your children remembering where the will is for the next 40 years.)
- They are difficult to access, especially for expats and family members who don’t live together.
- They are difficult to update. Whenever you acquire new assets, or your preferences or family situation changes, you need to go to a lawyer and update your traditional will – not an easy process, to say the least.
Digital wills solve many of these problems. They are easy to create and can be easily shared with family members. Most importantly, they are easy to update whenever you want to do so. And you can do all of this from the comfort of your home!
Combining a Digital Will with Digital Inheritance
Digital wills have many benefits, but they are becoming a way more powerful tool for asset protection when they are combined with digital inheritance services!
Digital inheritance services enable people to keep a register of their digital, financial, and physical assets and designate beneficiaries, and the services are able to detect when a fatal event has happened to the user.
Upon the detection of such an event, digital inheritance services automatically and proactively notify the beneficiaries. They don’t have the burden of remembering the assets, their location, access details, etc. All of this information is provided to the beneficiaries whom the user has designated to each of the assets. In this way, the beneficiaries are able to identify and locate the assets designated to them by the user.
Digital inheritance services detect fatal events through a protocol of various checks:
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- email verifications,
- phone verifications, and
- the detection of a lack of activity on social networks selected by the user.
If all of these fail – the user doesn’t reply to emails, doesn’t answer phone calls, doesn’t reply to push notifications, and is no longer active on the preferred social networks – the system detects an unforeseen event. It’s a great way to ensure peace of mind, knowing that your loved ones will be notified about your assets and step into rightful possession. You avoid your hard earned money staying in banks, insurance companies, and online brokers and ensure it will go to your loved ones should anything happen to you.
Another advantage of digital inheritance services is that they enable people to associate passwords and access credentials with assets. Digital assets usually require access details. Even most physical assets these days have digital access. With digital inheritance services, you can not only create a digital register of your assets but also associate them with access details such as passwords and access keys. In this way, your loved ones will be able to not only identify and locate the assets that you’ve designated to them but also access them.
Combining that great power with a digital will makes the service a great tool for the holistic protection of your assets and estate.
The digital will records your inheritance preferences, and the digital inheritance service ensures that your beneficiaries will be informed about these preferences should anything happen to you.
