NewTech Friday: Testamento – a slick solution to protect the French against the unexpected
Virgile Delporte, Co-Founder & CEO of Testamento, describes how he is helping French people plan for the unexpected events that life throws our way.
Virgile Delporte, Co-Founder & CEO of Testamento, describes how he is helping French people plan for the unexpected events that life throws our way.
What led to the creation of Testamento?
On the eve of leaving, together with my wife, for a two-week trek in the Amazon, I suddenly became worried: what would happen to my children, if unfortunately, we did not return from this trip? The information I found on the internet was so unclear I was no longer just worried but completely lost. As best I could, I wrote a will to protect my children and ensure my estate. When I returned from the trek, I decided to go see a notary. I then learned that the will I had drawn up had no legal value. My wishes would not have been respected.
From this experience came the idea of creating an estate planning platform to allow everyone to prepare their succession. We wanted to create the ability to understand in a few clicks who, in the absence of a will, are our heirs. And also, to be able to express our last wishes and be able to designate the people who will be in charge of enforcing them. And of course, being able to write a will. In 2013, I launched testamento.fr, a B2C platform. In 2018, we started to create innovative B2B digital tech solutions to enrich the commercial approaches and services of bancassurance players.
Could you present Testamento's offer?
On the B2C side, we still offer a range of services to retail customers: last wishes, will writing and a lot of educational content as well as simulators.
But our main focus has changed to our B2B range of solutions. These solutions are available in SaaS mode or via API and white label. They are integrated during the pre-sales of distribution networks (Testamento Detect & Optimizer), in the management of beneficiary clauses (Testamento Beneficiary) and go so far as to form an awareness and services platform around estate planning and optimization (Testamento Planner). We now have more than fifteen B2B customers (including Generali, Allianz, Axa, the MACIF group, La France Mutualiste and Malakoff Humanis). Our solutions are used by more than 5,000 bank, insurance or mutual advisors, and are already accessible to 5+million people in France.
What's coming next for Testamento?
After eight years of experience with Testamento, I now believe our ambition could be defined as such: incite as many people as possible to anticipate, to plan for the unexpected. This is more than what we offered when I founded the company. One good example being beneficiary clauses. It is hard to believe that in 2022 the majority of insurers rely on a paper-based process. It is even harder to believe that there are still some beneficiary clauses that do not match the situation of end clients.
What comes next for Testamento is to become, in our domain, a reference on the market, not only on a national level but also acting internationally. Our APIs and customer journeys are ready to be used, easy to integrate into all commercial approaches and products on the market. We can become a reliable and innovative reference partner of insurers, helping them drive more business while being fully compliant with ever increasing regulation, thanks to a need-centric approach.
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