A report released this week has confirmed that the baby boomers’ cohort have been confirmed as the Will industry’s biggest consumer.
An online Will writing software solutions provider for legal service providers, Willsuite, has undertaken research analysis in the Will writing industry to gain a general overview of the Will statistics in England and Wales.
The 50-70-year age range were responsible for over half of the drafted Wills and the average age being 58 years old.
The findings found that since 2018 the age gap has increased from 56.5 to 58, indicating that more work needs to be done to encourage younger adults to make a will.
The findings were derived from data of over 50,000 Wills and over £6 billion in pledged gifts and The data compiled is a result of Wills drafted by legal professionals using Willsuite software and not the DIY market.
Seb Shakh, Director of Willsuite, said:
“I think the report shows we as an industry need to do more to ensure we still appeal to a younger and more tech-centric market, and that we can do more to promote charitable giving. I’m keen to see how we can accomplish this over the next year”
The research seems to indicate that more people are looking at later life planning in addition to protecting their wishes after they have died. Almost as many Lasting Powers of Attorneys (LPAs) were drafted last year than Wills and even though wills remain a priority, it seems as though LPAs are a huge concern for the modern consumer.
Willsuite’s report has also looked into charitable legacies, the most popular types of trust and planning tools contained in wills, the nation’s afterlife preferences as well as how the public are looking to donate their organs after death.
The exhaustive report is a key read for all stakeholders in the wills and probate sector and can be found here.
As a Wills service provider, do any of these statistics surprise you? What are your experiences?
One Response
I completely agree that more needs to be done to encourage the younger demographic to write their Wills and to plan ahead. If you look at the YouGov survey from 2015, it quoted the same 1/3 of the adult population has a Will but actually if you break this down into age groups, you can see that over 2/3 of baby boomers have Wills, whereas only 4% of 18-24 years old and only 8% of 25-34 years old, which is crazy being that the average age of first time mothers is 28.8 years old and the average age of mothers registering births is 30.4 years old and fathers is 33.3 years old (according to ONS).
Perhaps we as a profession need to do more to market to the Gen X, Millennials and the Gen Z since it’s commonplace within this profession to target-market over 55 homeowners.