Document Purpose
This document captures the business requirements behind the estate planning concept. It is a reconstructed portfolio document based on the case study work and is intended to show how the problem, scope, stakeholders, and success criteria were framed before solution design.
Executive Summary
The project explored how estate planning could be made more accessible for emerging households in South Africa through a guided digital process. The business opportunity sat in the gap between clear consumer need and low completion of traditional will-creation journeys. The proposed direction was a lower-friction, mobile-first service that could reduce user hesitation, improve completion, and support partner-led commercial distribution.
The core business issue was not only product access. It was also trust, process complexity, and the cost of completing a legal task that many users tend to postpone. The concept therefore needed to solve a real customer access problem while still being realistic from an operational and commercial point of view.
Business Problem
Estate planning is often delayed or never completed because the process feels expensive, legal-heavy, and difficult to navigate. For many users, the barrier is not just affordability. It is also the uncertainty of what is required, how long it will take, and whether the final output will be valid and useful.
From a business perspective, this creates a missed opportunity. There is a clear need, but the existing path to service is not well aligned to how the target market prefers to engage. A more familiar, guided, and mobile-first experience could improve access and create a viable distribution model through insurers or service partners.
Business Objectives
- Reduce the friction involved in starting and completing a will.
- Use a familiar digital channel that lowers the effort required from first-time users.
- Structure the journey so that users can move through it step by step with less confusion.
- Create a model that can support both customer access and commercial distribution.
- Build the foundation for a service that can later be tested, refined, and operationalised.
Stakeholders
End Users
Need a process that is understandable, mobile-first, and not overloaded with legal language.
Families and Beneficiaries
Depend on whether the document is completed correctly and can be relied on later.
Legal or Service Operators
Need structured information capture, manageable review points, and a process that does not create unnecessary manual complexity.
Distribution Partners
Would need a model that can work within insurer, service, or partner-led channels and justify the cost of delivery.
Current-State Assessment
The current state is characterised by:
- low confidence in completing estate planning without legal guidance
- unclear user understanding of what information is required
- process steps that feel heavy or intimidating
- weak fit between the user journey and mobile-first behavior
- a delivery model that can be expensive for users if priced as a standalone service
This means the market problem is partly educational, but more importantly operational. The service needs a simpler path to completion, not just better awareness.
Proposed Business Response
The proposed response was to turn will creation into a guided service flow delivered through WhatsApp. The reason for this channel choice was practical: it reduces entry friction, matches familiar user behavior, and supports step-by-step structured interaction.
The concept was not positioned as a replacement for all legal processes. It was positioned as a simplified and more accessible entry point that could capture structured information, validate key inputs, and produce a usable document output.
Scope
In Scope
- guided conversational intake
- structured information capture
- validation of required fields and progression logic
- document generation and digital delivery
- early commercial model exploration
Out of Scope
- full legal advisory service
- manual handling of complex estate scenarios
- full claims, probate, or estate administration processes
- enterprise-scale partner integrations beyond concept scope
Business Requirements
- The service must make the process feel simpler than traditional will creation.
- The journey must reduce uncertainty about what is required from the user.
- The output must be useful enough to justify completion effort.
- The model must be capable of fitting into a partner-led distribution strategy.
- The service must provide a clearer path from user need to document output without introducing unnecessary operational overhead.
Success Measures
- improved start-to-completion rate
- lower drop-off at key stages
- fewer failures caused by incomplete or invalid user input
- evidence that the service could be distributed through partners
- a clearer case for commercial viability than a consumer-only model
Assumptions
- users are more likely to start the process in a familiar messaging environment
- simpler structure improves completion
- partner-led models are more likely to support viable economics than direct consumer pricing alone
- the first version needs to prioritise clarity, completion, and traceability over breadth
Risks and Dependencies
- legal validity and review requirements may affect how far the process can be automated
- trust remains a critical factor even if friction is reduced
- partner viability is dependent on commercial alignment beyond the product concept itself
- user testing is needed to confirm which questions create the most hesitation or drop-off
Recommendation
The concept should move forward as a guided, testable service model rather than as a broad legal platform. The next phase should validate user behavior, identify the highest-friction steps, and confirm whether partner distribution can support rollout in a practical way.