My Legacy Link / My Legacy Vault 2.0

This project explores how to enhance end-of-life planning services and streamline post-death administrative processes. It is a reaction to the underutilization of existing tools and feedback from users who face difficulties navigating these sensitive moments. Our goal is to reduce the emotional and administrative burden for individuals and families by enabling a more accessible, automated, and supportive solution for managing end-of-life planning and post-death asset discovery.

Current Landscape and Government Initiatives

The Singapore government has taken steps to improve end-of-life planning with initiatives like My Legacy and SGFinDex, aiming to empower individuals to plan their estate and manage their assets. My Legacy Vault serves as a digital repository for users to store essential information related to their assets, while SGFinDex enables the aggregation of financial data from multiple institutions. However, adoption of these tools remains low due to a lack of awareness, perceived complexity, and reluctance to engage with sensitive topics like death and estate planning.

Despite the government’s efforts, gaps persist in the asset discovery process after death. Families often struggle with fragmented information, high legal costs, and the emotional toll of managing administrative tasks. Current processes require contacting multiple institutions individually, which can be time-consuming and costly. These challenges highlight the need for a more comprehensive and user-friendly solution.

Context and Stakeholders

We identified key challenges through surveys and interviews with stakeholders:

• Pre-Death Planning: 73% of survey respondents cited uncertainty about how to begin planning as a significant barrier. Many were unfamiliar with existing government resources like My Legacy. Asset listing is also very manual for those looking to update their asset details in their My Legacy Vault.

• Post-Death Asset Discovery: Families often struggle to locate documents, contact various institutions, and incur high legal fees, leading to delays and financial stress during an already difficult time. There is no centralized source to view all the assets owned by an individual and is scattered across public and private bodies. Eg. CPF, banks, insurance providers, HDB, private real estate, billing organizations etc.

Problem Significance

80% of survey respondents were not confident their family would know how to manage their assets after their passing. Asset tracking was inconsistent and fragmented, with many relying on spreadsheets or memory. Limited awareness and underutilization of available tools (current My Legacy Vault adoption rate <2% of Singapore’s resident population) exacerbate the problem.

We also spoke to financial institutions and legal institutions to ascertain and study the feasibility for navigating the processes for asset discovery.

Our proposed solutions focus on enabling services for 2 areas -

1. Pre-Death - Enhancement of My Legacy Vault - Automated consolidation of financial assets, thus optimizing and automating the current manual aggregation process, thus saving time and offering a scalable and authentic source of truth of financial assets for both institutions and families. This is made possible by the integration with SGFinDex to auto-populate the My Legacy Vault with existing data. This approach aims to simplify the initial setup and encourage more Singapore residents to use the Vault feature, which currently has a usage rate of less than 2% of the current population.
   
   In the future, we envision expanding this to include collating data from other providers, on an opt-in basis, making the asset listing process even more comprehensive. Other data sources envisioned to integrate in the future include, insurance providers, property firms, and billing and utility organizations.
   

2. Post-Death - Introduction of My Legacy Link - A portal that helps families and executors quickly discover and consolidate the deceased’s financial assets by notifying and contacting multiple financial institutions. A task which otherwise would be very costly and time intensive. We propose a dedicated public-facing portal, My Legacy Link, that verifies key data - such as death certificates, SingPass IDs as well as proof of relationships - and sends a standardized template to banks to streamline the process for requesting financial asset information of the deceased. This reduces the need for families to contact each institution individually and ensures faster and cost efficient servicing. This provides an easy means and guide for families and executors to approach the otherwise tedious process of financial asset listing.
   
   Our future path is to enable the other half of this service, a dedicated admin portal for financial institutions to access and respond directly to such asset inquires from the public in a streamlined and efficient format, complete with status tracking. We also plan to expand this service to include other asset institutions such as insurance providers, property firms, and billing and utility organizations to enable a more comprehensive asset inquiry and aggregation approach.

Objectives

• Simplify and encourage engagement with end-of-life planning.

• Reduce the administrative burden on families during asset discovery.

• Increase the adoption and usage of My Legacy Vault, My Legacy Link and related services.

Product Goals For My Legacy Vault:

• Goal 1: Increase Adoption of Current Vault Feature - Grow My Legacy Vault usage from <2% to at least 10% of the Singapore resident population within the next 2 years by automating financial data asset collection and comprehensive for usage by their families or nominees upon their passing.

• Goal 2: Simplify Asset Documentation - Automating financial data asset collection comprehensively via integration with SGFinDex for usage by families or nominees upon the passing of a resident. This reduces manual input by 80% and minimizes errors.

Product Goals For My Legacy Link:

• Goal 1: Reduce Administrative Time — Decrease the average time needed to notify banks and institutions from several hours to just a few minutes.

• Goal 2: Standardize Communication — Create a single, official template approved by Government for death notifications to various institution to reduce the administrative burden.

• Goal 3: Facilitate Asset Discovery — Provide executors or next-of-kin with a structured view (Schedule of Assets) of the deceased’s holdings, consolidating information from multiple institutions.

Research Methods

• Survey: 22 respondents from the general public, capturing both qualitative and quantitative data.

• Interviews: Singapore legal professionals, banks and insurance providers.

• Benchmarking: Reviewed similar services like the Australian Death Notification Service.

Key Findings -

1. Familiarity and Engagement with End-of-Life Planning:

   • Most respondents are somewhat familiar with the concept but are not actively engaged in the process.

   • Common reasons for not starting include complexity, lack of information, and difficulty finding the right resources.

2. Challenges in Asset Documentation:

   • Asset tracking is inconsistent—some use tools like Excel, or Gsheets, while others rely on memory.

   • There is a low confidence level that family members would know how to manage these assets if needed (several respondents rated themselves 1–2 out of 5 for confidence).

3. Awareness and Use of My Legacy:

   • Limited awareness and adoption of My Legacy for end-of-life planning, though a few respondents have explored it.

   • Those who used My Legacy had a neutral to positive experience, with suggestions for a more intuitive interface and deeper integration with other services.

4. Motivation to Start Planning:

   • Digital tools, reminders, and expert advice were cited as motivators.

   • Some respondents mentioned significant life events (e.g., marriage) as triggers to start planning.

5. Desired Features for a Digital Tool:

   • Step-by-step guidance, document storage, reminders, and a comprehensive asset discovery process were among the most requested features.

   • Some expressed a need for a global solution, especially for families with international ties.

We also interviewed the current Singapore My Legacy Team to understand the following -

• Methodology, research and process behind the My Legacy solution, especially when it comes to asset discovery for pre and post demise circumstances for the family or next of kin

• Challenges they faced when developing the solutions and blockers they met that we should be aware of

• Areas that they have planned for their near term roadmap so we do not overlap in our solutions

Challenges faced

• Sensitive Topic: Difficult to recruit users open to discussing estate matters especially those involving the death in the family. We overcame this by anonymizing survey data and focusing on high-level user flows.

• Multiple Stakeholders: Each bank or insurer has unique requirements, but a standardized approach (templated emails, single dashboard, data integrations) can gradually unify processes.

Design Iterations & Technology Choices

• Integration with SGFinDex: Automate data collection to reduce user input.

• Dedicated Death Notification Portal: Simplify asset discovery by verifying key documents and sending standardized requests to financial institutions.

• User-Centric Design: Ensure simplicity and clarity with step-by-step guidance and reminders.

Legacy Vault 2.0 (Pre-Death Planning)

A secure, centralized repository for financial asset data, enabling asset auto-population through SGFinDex.

• Key Features:

  • Automated asset listing.

  • Document storage and reminders.

  • Step-by-step guidance.

My Legacy Link (Post-Death Asset Discovery)

A public-facing portal to streamline asset discovery for families and executors.

• Key Features:

  • Verifies key documents (e.g., death certificates, proof of relationship).

  • Sends standardized requests to multiple asset institutions.

  • Provides a consolidated view of the deceased’s assets.

Legacy Vault 2.0 Step-by-Step

Step 1 - Log in with SingPass

Step 2 - Welcome message with Options

User can choose to update their vault information or to retrieve their love’s one vault.

1. If user choose to update information in my vault, then it will show My Legacy Vault page → step 3, or

2. If user choose to retrieve information from a love one’s vault, then it will validate access → step 8

Step 3 - My Legacy Vault Page

My Legacy Vault page, user can manage and update their vault

1. User can set up SGFinDex to retrieved data → Step 4 or, User also can update manually by adding bank account or insurance information

2. User can manage add their love one access by inputting NRIC/FIN → Step 8

Step 4 - Connect to SGFinDex

Step 5 - SGFinDex Terms & Conditions

User read T&C and then it’s require to agreed before pulling data

Step 6 - SGFinDex Connected

When SGFinDex is connected, the data of bank will be listed as below

Step 7 - Give grant access to your love ones to access my vault

User can add their one to grant access their vault, user can add multiple users

Step 8 - Granted Access to deceased individual’s vault

User can grant access to their love one deceased’s vault by using SingPass, My Legacy Vault will check and validate user associate with deceased’s vault,

1. If user has been added and exist in deceased’s vault, deceased’s vault will be display as below, user can export data as Excel file, so that user can know asset in vault and continue to work lawyer or bank to do the settlement

2. If user doesn’t have grant access to deceased’s vault, request to access form will be pop up

Step 1: Sign in with SingPass

Users begin by logging into My Legacy Link, a Gov.SG service that streamlines the process of notifying multiple organizations about a loved one’s passing. Authentication is done securely via Singpass, ensuring a seamless and trusted login experience.

Step 2: Initiating a Death Notification

The user begins by accessing the system and selecting "Add New Death Notification Support." This step ensures that the death notification process is formally initiated.

Step 3: Entering Death Certificate Details

The user inputs the Death Certificate Number and an Access Code for verification. This step ensures secure access to the deceased’s records by validating against ICA Database.

Step 4: Viewing Registered Deaths

The system displays a list of registered death notifications, including the deceased’s name, ID, and date of death. This allows users to track and manage notifications efficiently

Step 5: Relationship Verification

The user confirms their relationship to the deceased by answering key questions about the will, executor, or next-of-kin status. Verification is required to proceed with managing the estate.

Step 6: Uploading Required Documents

Users must upload the will and other required documents before sending notifications to service providers. This ensures compliance with legal and procedural requirements.

Step 7: Confirming Document Submission

Once the required documents are uploaded, the system unlocks the Death Notification Service. Users can now proceed with notifying relevant institutions.

Step 8: Sending Death Notifications to Institutions

Users input companies (for MVP purpose: banks, with future expansion potential to insurance companies, utilities, and more) that must be notified of a death. This streamlines account closure and estate administration.

Step 9: Submitting the Notification

The user selects the institution, enters the account details, and confirms the notification. For security, credit card details are not required—only confirmation of ownership.

Step 10: Death Notification Sent

An official death notification email is sent to the selected institution, requesting confirmation of any accounts or assets held by the deceased.

The email includes:

• Deceased’s details (Full Name, Identification Number, Date of Death)

• Request for Information on account holdings and next steps for asset access

• Uploaded supporting documents

• Estate Representative's Details (Requester Information, Status, Phone Number, Email, Case Number)

This provides a formal and structured template to help standardize the process for estate settlement.

Step 11: Tracking Notification Status

Once submitted, the system updates the notification status to reflect its progress. Users can track which institutions have been notified and take further action if needed.

Projected Impact:

• Time Savings: Reduce death notification and asset details request time from hours, days or even weeks to minutes.

• Improved Adoption: Drive My Legacy Vault usage by automating data collection.

• Cost Reduction: Lower legal fees by simplifying asset discovery for Singapore residents.

• Access To What Is Yours: Singapore residents can more easily claim their loved ones assets upon their passing with the knowledge of what these assets are.

1. Expand Data Sources: Integrate with more providers (insurance, property firms, utilities) to create a comprehensive asset listing.

2. Develop an Admin Portal: Allow financial institutions to respond directly to asset inquiries in one streamlined dashboard for managing death notification and asset inquiries.

3. Enhance User Experience: Add features like global compatibility, multi-language support, and deeper integration with My Legacy.

4. Collaborate with Stakeholders: Engage financial institutions, legal professionals, and government bodies to standardize processes.