What Happens to Your Digital Estate?

How many digital passwords do you have?

If you’re an average person, the latest data say you have 168 … with 87 of them for work.

Given First Wealth clients are anything but average, you may have more. This matters because digital assets are forming growing part of peoples’ estates. And your passwords control access to your digital estate.

Perhaps we could put it this way: hopefully you have a will, which specifies what goes where when you die. But how do your executors get into that bank account? That investment? Who knows the password to that crypto account you opened on a whim, and which is now way bigger than you expected?

There are other financial considerations. Average Britons pay about £65 a month in online subscriptions. Again, we’ll assume your payments may be much higher. These range from movie streaming to food deliveries. They’re often those hard-to-cancel subscriptions buried in the depths of your phone settings. Who turns those financial taps off, and quickly, to avoid your accounts getting drained? Does anyone else even know about them?

But it’s not just financial things. The chances are your family photographs and all that music you bought sit in the cloud. What happens to all this?

So, enough of the problem. We assume you get it. What can you do?

1. The first thing to consider is that digital assets have much in common with analogue assets. We don’t usually call a home or a classic car an ‘analogue asset’ – but maybe you’ll allow us, just this once. This is all because cancelling a deceased relative’s Netflix account is reasonably straightforward – while cancelling a bitcoin account can be less so.It would help if can catalogue everything, preferably in a separate document, that details what you have, where it is and how to gain access. It’s vital that executors can demonstrate that you have willingly documented instructions for getting into your digital assets.
2. Moreover, it would help to use a password manager with an emergency access facility. It’s a bit like not leaving your will lying around – but rather keeping it somewhere safe or secure.You absolutely don’t want to blend passwords and will. After all, probate automatically makes a will a public document … along with anything in it. But you do at least want to say that you have a password manager.
3. The third thing is that, again just like your estate in its entirety, digital estate planning is most effective when thought of as a process. It isn’t a one-and-done task.For example, you should update your password document with appropriate regularity. You should also try and keep on top of your subscriptions, seeing them as assets with inherent value.
4. Lastly, it would help to consider what you want done with each asset. For items with higher sentimental value should someone simply transfer them to their account? Should they filter and select the few they’d like to keep? Delete them all? What do you want? And the clearer your instructions for access and management of financially valuable assets the better.

However big your digital estate, the chances are that it’ll get bigger. Technology will surely play a more pervasive role in time. Addressing this now, as part of a holistic estate strategy, can really be the only sensible option.

Talk to one of our experts about how we can help you plan your estate – analogue and digital. We’re available on 020 7467 2700 and hello@firstwealth.co.uk.

This document is marketing material for a retail audience and does not constitute advice or recommendations. Past performance is not a guide to future performance and may not be repeated. The value of investments and the income from them may go down as well as up and investors may not get back the amount originally invested.