Bennett Oakley is a leading Sussex law firm based in Burgess Hill, Hassocks, Brighton and London which provides straight-talking and effective legal advice to help clients achieve their goals in an efficient and cost-effective manner.
Bennett Oakley Solicitors
Samuel Cash, Practice Manager, Bennett Oakley Solicitors explains: “We are an employee-owned firm and so as a team, we are all invested in providing the very best service possible to our valued client base. We have worked with Estatesearch for several years where they have provided help with asset searches in probate cases. We work as executors for many estates and now it’s our blanket policy to use Estatesearch’s Financial Profile Search in these probate cases, to ensure all assets and liabilities are identified. Most recently we have worked closely with Ben Furlong, Managing Director of Estatesearch and Jack Percival, Senior Account Manager in relation to cleansing our Will Bank”
Bennett Oakley’s Will Bank Revamp with Estatesearch
Estatesearch’s Will Bank Data Cleanse Service was developed to help private client practitioners manage data more efficiently, while maximising the potential pipeline of work from existing customers. The unique service also allows firms to understand their client dataset in terms of mortality and helps comply with GDPR.
Samuel Cash continues: “We have a sizable Will Bank of around 10,000 Wills. Because Bennett Oakley was established in 1957 many of these Wills were historic and some originated from another Will Bank we purchased in 2012. It was difficult to assess the integrity of the data and we had no way of tracking the deceased or anyone who had moved house.
“We had spent time digitising the Will Bank by putting basic information including name, address and date of Will into an Excel spreadsheet but that was as far as we had got. Ben and Jack approached us about a new Will Bank management tool they were developing at Estatesearch and asked if we’d like to be included in the trial to help us cleanse our data.
Streamlining Will Management for GDPR Compliance
“We met with them a few times to discuss how best to run the data and also to explore what information we’d need returned to us to help manage more proactive communication with our clients. Our spreadsheet was cleansed and a report was provided which contained significantly more information about each client. The report informed us if clients were deceased and where they were confirmed to be still living, it also provided their up-to-date address details.
“We were then able to write to selected clients with a personal, sensitive and light-touch message, in some cases simply saying ‘we are here to help when you need us’. We feel it’s much better if clients receive something from us before they need to contact us.
“In this way, the data cleanse was invaluable. It would have been unthinkable for us to have allocated the resources to update so many records individually. We now have an up-to-date Will Bank and new Wills can be added easily so everything is in one place.
Modernising Client Communications
“Ongoing Notifications of any changes of address, or if a client has passed away, mean we can now be proactive in our communication and offer a more timely and appropriate service which has been well received by our clients. “Throughout the trial, Ben and Jack provided an exceptional, faultless service and we are now pleased to be using the Will Bank Management notification service which allows us to keep our records up to date.
“We now have a confident understanding of our Will Bank data. Because of the work that the Estatesearch team has carried out, we can quickly identify relevant opportunities to communicate with clients, while ensuring we comply with GDPR.”
For further information about Bennett Oakley please see: https://www.bennettoakley.co.uk/