Preserving Legacies: Estate Planning and Digital Assets with Robyn Sechler from GoodTrust, Head of partnerships at GoodTrust

In this episode we speak with with Robyn Sechler, Head of partnerships at GoodTrust about her WHY, WHAT and HOW when it comes to Estate Planning for both physical and digital assets.

Robyn Sechler, VP of Partnerships at GoodTrust, discusses the importance of preserving memories and digital assets alongside estate planning. Sharing her personal story, she highlights GoodTrust’s innovative digital vault, democratizing estate planning for all. Robyn envisions a future where AI enhances accessibility, empowering individuals to protect their legacies with peace of mind.

Keywords

• Estate Planning
• Digital Assets
• GoodTrust
• Memories Preservation
• Digital Vault
• AI in Estate Planning
• Accessibility
• Peace of Mind
• Legacy Protection
• Financial Services

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Banking on Information. Today, my guest is Robyn Sechler from GoodTrust. She is the VP of Partnerships. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me today. I'm excited. Yeah, and we're going to start with a very important first question. That's always the first question on the podcast, which is, why do you do what you do? So why do you do what you do, Robyn? Yeah. Oh, man, this is such a great question. You know, I come to this with some, you know, my background has brought me to where we are today. And I'm just going to share a little story with you quickly to help you sort of understand why I find any of this to be important.

Um, you know it's about 15 years ago now that I lost my dad and when he passed away um I I didn't really do a good job of capturing his stories or his his life or you know anything really about who he was as a person but when he was sick I sat with him in his hospice room day after day. And I ran out of things to talk about. And so I just started asking him questions about his life. And I asked him things like, you know, who had the best room in the house and why did you become a teacher? And, you know, my father was an entrepreneur, so I was asking him questions about that.

And then I realized there were smaller things that I didn't know, like what kind of ice cream did you like and what kept you up at night? And so one of those days when my dad and I were having a conversation, my husband walked into the room and he picked up my BlackBerry, which dates me a little bit. But he pressed the record button on that BlackBerry device, put the phone down and walked out of the room. My dad and I didn't know what he had done and we just kept talking. And the next day, my dad passed away with all that comes from losing somebody. My husband didn't really realize the importance of what he had done that day. And of course, I didn't know that he pressed record.

So we fast forward about eight years later when my youngest daughter, we have three kids and they were all born after my dad had passed away. And my daughter, who was two at the time, found this BlackBerry from some box in some closet, who knows where. And when my husband saw that BlackBerry, he said literally like, Hold the phone. You need to take that from her. Come into the other room. I'm going to tell you a story. And he told me how he had recorded this conversation between my dad and me. I knew in that moment that I had to get that recording off of the BlackBerry, which of course I didn't have a password for or a charger for it anymore.

And I won't bore you with all the steps it took for me to get that recording off of the BlackBerry, but I knew that once I did and I put it onto my computer that I was going to have to put it somewhere safe. I allowed my kids to watch this or listen rather to the audio which was the first time they had ever heard my dad's voice and when I expected them to say 'you know technology's come a long way, this old grainy recording is uh, is not as cool as the technology we have today.' Instead, they started asking me more questions about him. They asked things like, how did he meet grandma? And why do we live in Pittsburgh?

And I realized that we weren't the only ones who needed help to be able to protect the stories of our families, that other people do too. So I set out to find a solution to manage our digital assets, photos, videos – the place where we keep our stories. And that really then developed into: I have an estate planning background. I've been in the estate planning space for about 15 years as well. So really being able to marry this idea of our digital assets and our digital life. And when I met the founder of GoodTrust, Rickard Steiber, we realized that we could build this machine together where we can help families to protect not only their digital assets, but also their physical assets and their families. And bring peace of mind through all of that.

So together, we built Good Trust as it is today. Wow, that is a great story. And that really gives me a window into why you're doing what you're doing. This is obviously very important, right? Memories that we have of our loved ones and the stories that we have about them. Just like we have physical things that we leave behind, actually, the memories are very important too. And and more and more they live in digital spaces so that is that is a great great story there um so how did that turn into what you are doing now how are you helping your customers at GoodTrust capture those memories and and what do you do for them Yeah.

So we know that estate planning is the action of writing a will or a trust, power of attorney, health care directive, assigning guardians, and deciding who gets what, right? We know that today you can do that by driving down to see an attorney, parking downtown, paying to park, going upstairs six flights to meet somebody that maybe you do or don't know very well. so by transitioning this estate planning experience into a technology format, it allows us to reach people in the moment where they are, if there are you know accessibility becomes easier, it's certainly more affordable, it's easier to share with family members, you know, today or tomorrow, and it becomes much more you know accessible when you can complete your estate plan from your phone or your computer or your laptop as opposed to having to do it in person, and so really, you know, our goal is to democratize estate planning and this is one way that we can help to do that, right?

So you help your customers with their estate planning both from a money perspective and physical assets but also help them capture those memories that Were so important to them exactly exactly so with good trust alongside you know traditional estate planning things that you might think about like the will trust power of attorney etc we built a digital vault which is the piece that allows you to include your online life into your estate plan we are the only company out there who offers this today And, you know, I think we could agree that our online lives are just going to continue to grow rather than shrink, you know, from this day forward. But that allows you to include things like you mentioned photos and videos, which, you know, obviously tugs on my heartstrings.

But also things like online bill pay or ongoing subscriptions, the ability to share things like my social media information with my husband. Maybe I want him to close those accounts if something were to happen to me, or access my email address, or even access my phone with things like two-factor authentication and all of the things that we store in our phones or other devices today. So it's really bringing those things to awareness to our loved ones to say, hey, these assets exist and they do have a value, whether sometimes that's sentimental and sometimes, of course, that's financial as well. Yeah. And so that sounds very valuable to do that; what, what do you hear from your customers? How they get value from that in what type of ways do they get value?

Yeah, the most the the number one thing that people say, in fact we just did a survey on this as well, but the number one thing that people say when they complete their estate plan is that they have peace of mind; peace of mind of knowing that their wishes are going to be followed, that their family members have clarity on what it is that they would want. They don't have to leave these difficult decisions up to somebody else during an already difficult time. It's really knowing that they have taken those steps to protect their family, to protect themselves, and to make things as seamless and as easy as they can be. That is very clear. Peace of mind is very, very valuable, knowing that everything is well taken care of, especially during difficult times, right?

When someone passes, obviously, that's a very difficult time to think about that. And it's great if it's well taken care of. I like to do this thing on the podcast called futures thinking. And we all don't know what the future holds, but we can think about what possible futures could look like. I want to do that exercise with you, Robin, and sort of let's think 10 years out. And what do I see 10 years from now, 2034? What does sort of estate planning look like? What does the world look like? And how does a service like this fit into that? Yeah. You know, if I could dream, estate planning would be something that everybody has access to. And we tend to think of estate planning as something that, you know, either the elderly or the wealthy need.

But in reality, there are all these moments in our lives where estate planning matters, getting married, having kids, getting divorced, retiring, buying a home or other important asset. If I could imagine where everybody would have access to be able to protect those things that matter to them, that's where I hope we're going. And I think it's interesting to think about, you know, maybe it's five years ago, the idea of visiting your physician online or on your phone may have been something that people were not as comfortable with. And I imagine that five years, 10 years from now. creating your estate plan from your phone or your other device is going to be the norm, similar to how the norm is to visit your physician or other healthcare provider online.

So I see that we are heading that direction. And I also believe that AI is going to become more important in this role in helping people to answer questions appropriately in the moment, and be able to provide them with real-time information. Yeah, that's a great vision for the future, 10 years out, possible future. But if we assume that's going to be reality, what do people need to do today to get ready for that future that you were just painting? Yeah, you know, the two out of every three people out there don't have an estate plan today. And I think that there's a barrier there with understanding what an estate plan can do for you. So I think that education is a huge piece of this.

And if I could, if I could leave a piece of advice, it would be just to educate yourself on what an estate plan can do for you outside of managing, you know, money or assets, because again, those are the things that we tend to think about, but healthcare decisions and digital assets, as we talked about. Assigning guardians for minors, thinking about all of these other pieces is going to be a very important part of that. Great. Well, that is a great way, I think, to wrap this up. So for everyone out there, get peace of mind, go get your estate plan done. The watchers and the listeners to this podcast who are in financial services, maybe you should think about offering this to your own customers because they will need this as well. Thank you very much, Robyn, for being on the podcast today. Absolutely. Thank you so much. And until next time, choose to be curious.