Fifth Third offers wills to its customers, free of charge

Fifth Third is giving new meaning to the term “free will.”

The Cincinnati-based regional bank is now offering will-writing services to all of its customers, free of charge, via an online platform called Trust & Will. The bank announced the new perk on Monday, saying it would become available immediately.

“We’re constantly thinking about the ways that we can improve our customer experience and meet them where they are, no matter where they are financially,” Erin Crawford, Fifth Third’s head of consumer digital banking, told American Banker. “And so we leaned into this space a little bit more with Trust & Will.”

Trust & Will provides a streamlined, TurboTax-like interface for filling out estate planning documents. To write a will, the website normally charges $199 for individuals or $299 for couples.

The company also conducts research on estate planning, which Americans tend to neglect. According to Trust & Will’s latest study, 83% of U.S. adults consider estate planning important, but only 31% of them have written a will.

Fifth Third is hoping to change that, at least for its customers. Its new service is not only complimentary, but quick — the bank estimates that writing a will this way should take less than an hour.

“We’ve given [customers] the means to feel safe enough to say, ‘Well, I can try this,'” Crawford said. “‘I’m not super technical, but if it’s not that hard, and I’m getting this for free, I’ll take a chance on this.'”

Fifth Third operates in 11 states and has $213 billion of assets. Consumer banking is one of its three main businesses, along with commercial banking and wealth management.

In the short run, the bank expects to make no profit from the will-writing service, but Crawford sees it as part of a longer-term strategy.

“The benefit is not necessarily to the bank from a financial perspective, but focused on that long-term relationship,” she said. “We’re giving you the things you need to stay with us. And if you’re liking the things that we provide you with, we want you to think of us for that next thing.”

That strategy dovetails with Trust & Will’s goals. Cody Barbo, the fintech’s founder and CEO, said the company’s mission is “to make estate planning easy, affordable and accessible.”

“Over the last seven years, we’ve helped over a million people in this country get started with estate planning,” Barbo told American Banker. “These are people that have either a) never done it because they couldn’t afford the traditional attorney route, or b) they would have waited until later in life to do it.”

Fifth Third CEO: Deregulation will up competition for banks

Trust & Will works with customers across a wide range of ages, Barbo said, from retirees in their 90s to students as young as 18 who are looking for health care proxies in case something happens to them after they leave home for college.

The largest demographic Trust & Will serves, according to Barbo, is the “sandwich generation“: adults caring for their children and their aging parents at the same time.

“Our sweet spot is that 30- to 55-year-old segment,” he said. “They have either minor children, or their kids are just making it out of the house to go off to college. And they’re also dealing with their parents aging and having health issues and challenges, so they need authority to help their mom and dad.”

Barbo said that Trust & Will assumes the people who come to its website know nothing about estate planning, so the platform is built around educating customers about their options. Trust & Will uses a combination of educational articles, a user-answered quiz and personalized consultations to help customers determine whether a will or a trust is a better fit for their financial situation.

“It’s not just the offer that the customer is going to get, it’s the continued hand-holding through life changes,” Barbo said.

Trust & Will has a 24/7 AI-powered chatbot for basic inquiries, but its main customer support infrastructure is a human call center available during business hours. The human element is key to serving people well through the emotionally complex journey of estate planning, Barbo said.

“Sometimes they’re emotional calls,” he said. “They could have just lost a loved one, or they just got a terminal diagnosis — needing to set up a plan with only months to live. We try to keep a high EQ approach with our human support.”

Whatever its customers’ age or family situation, Fifth Third is confident that it’s providing a valuable service.

“It’s not necessarily based on your asset class or where you are financially, because you can’t put a price on your family,” Crawford said. “We’ve seen that it doesn’t matter where you are financially, and it doesn’t matter what age you are. Everybody needs an estate plan.”