After spending nine months trying to close his late father’s account, Colin Jowell wanted to create a platform to sort out all his bills after a death. (Credit: Provided/Getty)
A new platform has launched in Australia to help people cancel or transfer invoices after their death. Depending on how well-planned you are, it could take your loved ones hours to contact each subscription service provider to tell them you’ve passed away.
BillWill aims to take all that hassle out of the equation, allowing people to focus on grieving and making funeral and burial arrangements. Colin Jowell, the app’s founder, told Yahoo Finance that he was inspired to start the service after experiencing this situation first-hand.
“My father was a lawyer and a very organized man. We knew he was sick and he was trying to get everything in order,” he said.
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“But even the most organised person in the world couldn’t miss certain direct debits being quietly taken from services they no longer use.”
Jowell said it took nine months and multiple discussions with the company to finally reject the bill.
But many people don’t sort and organize their subscriptions and bills, he said, which can leave families digging around trying to figure out if they’ve been charged late fees or for services they no longer need.
So Jowell began developing BillWill and after two years of work, launched the product in Australia.
“These bills are becoming invisible,” he said. “It would be nice if they came in the mail and told us we were late on our payments, but we don’t even get that reminder. So we just see this as a problem that’s only going to get worse over time.”
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How does BillWill work?
People who sign up to BillWill can upload up to 20 different bills or subscription services, then declare whether they want those bills cancelled or transferred to a new person if they die.
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Users must designate an administrator for their account and BillWill will contact that administrator to verify all instructions given by the user.
You can upload your bills manually or give BillWill access to your bank account and use Open Banking technology to scan all your payments and find your monthly bills.
This is the first platform in the world to use this kind of technology to organize your invoices.
“We’ve focused on the big problems through our open banking algorithms and made sure things like insurance and water were captured through that technology,” Jowell said.
Once your admin gives the go-ahead, BillWill will contact all subscription services on your behalf.
It costs $45 annually to keep your account active, plus a $149 registration fee.
Save dozens of hours of administration
BillWill estimates that it can take more than 50 hours to close or transfer a bill after someone passes away.
That was enough to convince Lauren, who lives in Sydney, to sign up for the service.
She handled all the paperwork for her family’s life and didn’t want to burden them with the hassle of sending documents or waiting on the phone.
“I think my husband especially wouldn’t know where to start if something were to happen. [to me]” she explained to Yahoo Finance.
“It probably took me about 10 minutes to sign up and then I selected the open banking option which was really amazing, which was really magical because I can’t even remember which direct debits I set up.”
She realized she had thousands of dollars worth of bills and subscriptions to pay each month, and that missing payments could result in even bigger late fees.
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