Anton Pirinen, Founder and CEO of Blanket, says the traditionally complex process is increasingly out of step with the digital experiences residents have come to expect.
The UAE has transformed how residents access government, banking and utility services, yet estate planning remains a complex and often time-consuming process. Growing demand for faster, more accessible digital experiences is now creating an opportunity to modernise how people protect their assets and secure their families’ futures.
Anton Pirinen, Founder and CEO of Blanket, says the traditionally complex process is increasingly out of step with the digital experiences residents have come to expect.
Pirinen said: “We live in an era where almost everything is digital. In the UAE, we are said to spend more than eight hours a day online, with technology shaping everything we do – from the products we buy, to the services we access. Processes that once took hours – or even days – can now be completed in a matter of minutes.
“We can renew a visa from our phone, open a bank account without visiting a branch, and settle a utility bill in seconds through an app. Yet while so much of our lives has become faster and more convenient, estate planning is as yet to catch up. Protecting your family and putting plans in place should something happen, remains an important – but often overlooked – process, and one that has traditionally been perceived as complicated, time-consuming and difficult to navigate.
Building Customer Journey
According to Pirinen, the gap between the smooth digital experiences people have become accustomed to and the traditionally more cumbersome estate-planning journey has never made sense to him.
“This isn’t because people don’t care about putting these plans in place, but more likely because the process itself has been the barrier. When something feels complicated, time-consuming or difficult to navigate, it inevitably gets pushed down the list – leaving many without their affairs properly in order,” he said
Estate planning can, of course, be complex, particularly for residents with property and assets across multiple jurisdictions. Traditionally, this has meant lengthy audit trails, law firm retainers and a level of complexity that feels entirely at odds with how people now expect to manage almost every other aspect of their lives.
“UAE residents are used to an incredibly high standard of service, supported by the forward-thinking and ambitious digital strategies the country’s leadership has put in place,” Pirinen said.
“There is therefore a real opportunity to bring succession planning up to date, making the process simpler, more efficient and much more in line with the seamless customer journey people have come to expect from other services,” he added.
Bridging Gap
Pirinen said he saw the need to bring succession planning into the digital age first-hand. As a lawyer, and later as part of the founding team at Wio Bank, he watched two worlds that should have been converging stay intrinsically apart – the legal expertise needed to protect a family’s future, and the customer journey that has made every other financial decision much simpler.
Estate planning has, for the most part, sat outside that shift. Much of the traditional process was built for a smaller, less mobile population – not the millions of expats who now call the UAE home, many with assets, dependants and legal ties across multiple countries.
“That’s the problem we set out to solve at Blanket. We didn’t want to simply digitise a law firm’s paperwork; we wanted to rethink the process around the way people actually live today,” according to Pirinen.
He said the UAE’s digitally savvy population increasingly expects speed, efficiency and innovation.
“When so much else in our lives can be managed at the click of a button, there was a clear need to bring that same thinking to estate planning,” he added.
Rebuilding Process for a Digital-first Population
In practice, Pirinen said, this is where the gap can really be bridged. A UAE resident can complete Blanket’s assessment in around 10 to 15 minutes with a clear set of questions and a dedicated support available throughout the process. From there, the platform prepares a will based on those answers, with a human specialist reviewing everything before it moves to registration.
“Where the traditional process could involve multiple meetings, printed drafts and weeks of back and forth, the majority of the journey can now be managed in one place, on one screen,” he said.
Registration itself still runs through the UAE’s official channels, and rightly so. What has changed, Pirinen said, is everything around it – making the questions clearer, the pricing more transparent and affordable, and the overall experience far easier to navigate.
Blanket also built the Blanket Vault, giving people one secure place to store important documents and share selected information with the right people, at the right time.
“It means less reliance on paperwork sitting in a drawer somewhere, and far more confidence that the people who may one day need access to it can actually find it,” Pirinen said.
Technology Should Make People More Likely to Act
None of this removes the seriousness of the decision. If anything, Pirinen said, technology makes people more likely to engage with something this important.
“The barrier was never that people didn’t understand the need to take care of their affairs; it was that the process often asked too much of them before they had even started,” he added.
Creating a more seamless journey therefore does far more than simply save time. It brings together the latest technology with a process that is easy to understand, thorough and far more reflective of the way people already manage every other aspect of their digitally connected lives.
“What excites me most, though, is what this can unlock beyond convenience,” Pirinen said. A more digitised and structured approach to estate planning gives us much better insight into how residents are actually planning, where the gaps exist across different nationalities or asset types, and where government and industry can continue to close the gap between intention and action.
“For a country that has built so much of its digital ambition around innovation and continuous improvement, that kind of insight can be incredibly valuable,” he added.
Removing the Friction from Estate Planning
The UAE is well known for its first-class approach to service, and that runs through the digital services available to both residents and visitors. Its ambition to become one of the most digitally advanced nations in the world is fast being realised, and succession planning is now beginning to catch up.
“What was once a time-consuming and often complex process is becoming far easier to navigate – important when it is ultimately one of the most consequential life decisions to get right,” Pirinen said.
“We’re still relatively early in that shift, but the direction is clear. Succession planning is becoming part of the UAE’s wider digital transformation story, and something people may once have put off or avoided thinking about can now be approached in a far more seamless, accessible way – increasingly at the click of a button,” he added.
Source: Tahawul Tech