The administration of deceased estates is notorious for bureaucracy and legacy systems, but one startup is giving people a much-needed tech boost.
When Sarah Poole, lawyer and former Head of NAB Bereavement Services, sat down to begin administering her late mother-in-law’s estate, she realised something was wrong.
Despite all her professional experience, it took her countless hours and multiple versions of the same documents to navigate the various processes, not to mention multiple certification requirements and in-person meetings. The process took several years and, by the time the estate finally settled, Poole knew there had to be a better way.
“It’s a very stressful time, and there can be a lot of friction in families as they wait for funds to be released,” Poole says. “In administering my mother-in-law’s estate, I got the chance to be the customer and started to think about how to create one streamlined system.”
She joined forces with long-time friend Marielle Yeoh, a former executive at digital services company PEXA, who brought network growth expertise to the table. The two began to build estateXchange, a secure online platform connecting estate lawyers, professional trustees and relevant organisations to streamline information sharing. The goal is to make the process of settling deceased estates simple, secure and sympathetic.
Poole’s career has had several chapters, she says, and each has given her the skills she currently uses as founder and Co-CEO. She studied law at Monash University, forging a career plan that was embedded in her mind at an early age thanks to primary school ambitions of being Australia’s first female prime minister.
“My mum said I’d have to start out in law to be prime minister, and it was the era of Ally McBeal, so it stuck, and I became fixated on becoming a lawyer,” Poole recalls.
Poole initially joined a law firm in Brisbane but moved around, working in the areas of managed investments and financial services. Then, stepping out of the law, she gained experience in executive roles across public and private sectors and eventually took a leadership position at NAB.
“The law is an interesting career, because it gives you so many transferable skills,” she says. “I always describe my career to date as a bit of a patchwork quilt. None of the things that I did were overly correlated with each other, but it all eventually came together to shape the vision for estateXchange.”
As a company founder, Poole says, her passion is to leave the world better than she found it, even if it is just one small way that makes people’s lives easier.
The fundamental issue with deceased estates’ administration, Poole says, is that the nature of this area of law demands a lot of paperwork, and that can mean long waiting periods.
It comes down to the complexities of life that all culminate when someone dies, Poole explains.
“There are bank accounts, properties, shares, super funds, insurance and utilities, and all the things that people have in their lives that they manage,” she says. “But, in the event of death, every single one of those things needs to be dealt with, and they all have different processes.
“You start to realise there are 20 or 30 separate processes that need addressing, but they often require the same information, and technology does very little to assist.”
Poole realised that the area of deceased estates needed a fundamental shift from being a back office, administrative function to one that focused on community expectations and customer service.
“We knew the whole process could be simplified, but we tackled it by looking at an ecosystem-based solution,” she says. “This means it isn’t just about delivering a bit of technology to an organisation, but actually about bringing all the parties together.”
Once Poole and Yeoh built their team, they set about building their technology platform.
In simple terms, estateXchange’s business-to-business technology brings together professional estate representatives and all the parties that hold assets or accounts, such as institutions and service providers, in a secure environment to exchange information and to share and verify documentation about the estate in question.
“This means that things like proof of death, proof of authority and proof of identity can be shared once within the platform and verified directly from the source,” she says. “It’s more efficient, more secure and a much better experience for everyone, especially considering you usually are dealing with a grieving client.”
The estateXchange platform, which went live in October 2024, was built alongside market engagement, which included lawyers, professional trustees and large organisations and was developed in close collaboration with key stakeholders, including banks and superannuation funds. The platform also has standalone tools that can be used to verify proof of death and identity.
Poole believes that, as estateXchange grows and attracts more industry players, the network of support will widen, and the offering will become even more compelling.
“I think what we’ve created is significant, because it allows people to spend more time on the value-add aspects of their business,” Poole says. “Rather than sitting on the phone to a bank, they are able to deliver a better experience for their client.” ■
Co-CEOs Sarah Poole and Marielle Yeoh co-founded estateXchange to streamline the administration of deceased estates. The online platform brings together professional estate representatives and institutions to digitise and exchange information and documentation about a deceased estate in a simplified, secure and sympathetic way.
Words by
Louise Surette
