The future of wills is video
The country’s first online service allowing people to use mobile phones to make video messages to supplement their wills is set for launch.
Kinly.co.nz is the latest innovation by Andrew Barnes from Perpetual Guardian Trust, New Zealand’s largest trusts, wills and estates business.
Seeking to bring wills into the 21st century, Barnes has been building, and acquiring, online will-creation services aimed at helping the young, and the timepoor to create wills.
So far, it includes MyBucketList.co.nz- a will-making service targeting Millennials, and e-wills.co.nz, which is aimed at
One day, some wills may be digitallysigned videos
older people. It also includes a secure online document ‘‘vault’’, and an electronic wills ‘‘registry’’, designed as a central depository for wills.
Kinly will let people use their phones to record videos of their wishes to guide the executors of their estate.
The videos will replace the oldfashioned ‘‘memorandum of wishes’’ often written by someone writing a will to guide those administering their estate.
Barnes believes a video will be more persuasive than a letter of wishes.
It’s also a more attractive way to younger will-makers, he says. They increasingly want to use their mobile phones to manage all areas of their lives.
Barnes says: ‘‘Kinly is very much targeted at the under 35s. The whole premise is to try to get them more engaged.’’
Perhaps one day, Barnes says, some people’s wills may be no more than digitally-signed videos.
There’s a sticking point however. Valid wills must be signed and witnessed, and the signature must be made with a pen.
Barnes has been lobbying Parliament to allow digital signatures.
It would give businesses like his a head-start in developing technology it can sell to the rest of the world, Barnes says.