Lyfeguard, a life planning assistant and document management platform, has launched its financial technology solution in the UK to streamline financial management and planning.

Lyfeguard enables users to store, share and organise important financial information, as well as legal documents, birth certificates, and wills, all through one platform. It then allows this information to be passed securely onto friends, family and trusted advisors, making life and end-of-life management far simpler.

The application also includes important reminders and displays reports and insights into key metrics such as financial health, via its financial dashboard. Up-to-date bank and credit card balance totals auto-populates the financial dashboard using Open Banking technology, through its partner Tink.

Lyfeguard sets out to solve the issue of poor personal information storage and management. Research revealed that the average adult spends 5 years and 5 months of their life on ‘life admin’. Furthermore, there is still £50bn of unclaimed assets in the UK across pensions, banking, insurance and savings, pointing to demand for a simple, all-in-one platform to collate these assets.

Likewise, 54 per cent of UK adults do not have a will, 5.4 million are unsure how to even make one and 81 per cent of adults have not saved any money towards their funeral. Lyfeguard found that this is because death is still a taboo topic in the UK and people often fail to plan for it. As a consequence family disputes happen often: one in three UK adults have fallen out with a relative over the death of a family member.

Data security sits at the core of the platform, and it comes equipped with two-factor authentication for sign-in, as well as AES-256 encryption, which is the gold-standard for data encryption. Lyfeguard also includes 14 other types of security protection, and UK servers are externally monitored 24/7 against threats and attacks.

The platform was founded by serial entrepreneur and founder of Xceed Group, Gary Stewart, as well as a digital marketing expert and business entrepreneur, Fraser Stewart.

Gary Stewart, Co-Founder and CEO, commented on why he founded Lyfeguard: “After the recent death of a close friend, I was asked by his family to sort out his estate. I agreed to help of course, but I must admit to being overwhelmed by the task which was made more difficult because of the grief we were all suffering.”

“Not knowing the location of important information was difficult, particularly when it came to financial and legal documentation. This elongated the grieving process making it harder for all involved.”

“I decided then I wouldn’t want to leave my family in a similar position if something happened to me and so, the Lyfeguard vision was born. Now no one should have to struggle with the same problems I did.”

Fraser Stewart, Co-Founder and COO, said: “We set out to create a solution that resolved the two key problems of poor personal document management and simple end-of-life and legacy planning. Current competitors typically focus solely on the latter, but Lyfeguard strives to make personal and information accessible and useful in life too, for a holistic life planning experience which isn’t just centred around death.

“Lyfeguard is made possible through several partnerships and integrations with APIs, and there are a number of exciting collaborations already in the pipeline to take the platform to the next level.”