Data-driven, digital, but personal: New Director of Partnerships, Jonathan Maskew, on estate planning innovations

Jonathan Maskew is CTT’s new Director of Partnerships. As head of the Partnership Team, Jonathan brings with him a wealth of knowledge and experience from his established career in legal services, spanning over 30 years.

Jonathan’s worked with lawyers, barristers and estate planners; now, he’s sharing his unique skillset and industry insight with CTT Group and our members. With the support of the Partnership Team, Jonathan’s taking the lead on delivering digitalisation to our professional advisers, ensuring that you receive the full value of our services – and nothing short of excellence.

Here, he tells us of his plans for the new Partnership Team, some exciting new digital advances, and the delivery of CTT’s professional services moving forward.

My background for 25 years was managing barristers in chambers, everyone from junior clerks to chambers directors. I’m a non-lawyer, so my focus has always been the business side of things and how we’re delivering our services to clients.

Experience has taught me one of the best routes to market is for a service to be tech assisted, whether that’s through having proper software and case management with reliable data and management information or, more recently, with a greater use of artificial intelligence (AI).

We’re entering an exciting phase of digitalisation and the external economic drivers reflects that, with the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) and the Wills Commission forcing businesses to look at how they are providing services digitally.

CTT has the vision and is ahead of the curve when it comes to digitalisation for estate planning. They’re committed to tech – and CTT members already have a good awareness of digital processes as many are using our Legacy software, which is very exciting. The next stage for the Partnership Team is helping members with a conversation about using data to drive their strategy, and that’s one area of my expertise.

Driven by data

By sharing intelligence and data, we in the Partnership Team can get a clear picture of which CTT services will best support our individual clients. Members using Legacy can view their client data banks on a personalised dashboard.

It will reveal where we can help you make simple adjustments to process and workflow to increase revenue. For example, where levels of LPAs don’t match the number of wills you’re drafting and how to introduce this element into client conversations.

Plus, Legacy delivers further added value and benefits as clients can view their documents and track progress within any process in real time, for example when documents have been uploaded, opened, read and returned.

Data is key to how the Partnership Team can tailor CTT’s offering to fit members’ needs and help them recognise real opportunities for growth within their businesses. It will allow us to identify which services we can help members introduce to clients within workflows and any further staff training where appropriate, such as using our new AI Client Simulator.

Private Client is a personal service that’s quite sensitive. Then there are our other larger client firms who perhaps only use our software, but the same data and tech drivers still apply when it comes to scaling the business and how we can support their individual advisers.

More recently, I’ve worked with law firms that often don’t understand the value of the data they have at their disposal; it’s significant. Part of my role will be to accelerate our service into law firms and help them understand how to manage data from their will banks in a strategic, effective and smart manner that creates additional revenue streams through cross selling and upselling opportunities with clients, both existing and new.

Nurturing strategic paths to growth

The Legacy Portal app allows members to build strategic touchpoints with their clients. We can help you recognise triggers for contacting your clients, encouraging them to review and update their will, for example. We can also use it to help you plan for peaks and troughs throughout the calendar year.

Finding the pressure point for further work through CTT’s digitalisation of the process offers immense potential for our members, not just when they’re onboarding clients with the Legacy Portal app, but for managing succession planning, trusts, and probate. We can show members how to use this data – and if you’re an IFA, your data bank will be huge!

New approaches

Wills are about building a personal connection and making clients feel comfortable sharing detailed, sensitive knowledge about their family. While it’s often a challenging environment to work in when you’re prompting people to have a conversation about death, the planning aspect is really about protecting assets.

For example, when a client buys a new home, that’s the ideal time for you as their adviser to intuitively place the product that protects that asset. The terminology is completely different. It’s not a conversation about wills and dying, it’s about protecting the home they’ve invested in.

If you can take a client who’s buying a house and convert them into a will client by offering them a means of protecting their new asset, it’s no longer a one-off purchase, you’ve potentially got a client for life with various touchpoints for short, mid, and long-term revenue streams.

The other new and exciting approach is the wider acknowledgment and vision with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the benefits it brings for CTT and our partners. The acceleration of AI and the understanding of how it complements other key areas such as digitalisation and use of data is vital. Our ability to be continually agile to ensure we maximise our efforts in this fast-changing landscape will ensure you stay at the very forefront of industry technology.

Personal touch

Digitalisation is inevitable and we’ve got to share that vision with our members so they can be at the forefront of it, pushing the boundaries and advancing technology for the benefit of their clients.

But while it’s easy to get carried away with tech, it’s important not to drive a business to be too tech heavy. Key to finding that balance is seeing clients in their own environment as what we imagine is often very different from their reality.

From our point of view, the role of the Partnership Team is to be real people amongst it all, so we can have one-to-one conversations with our members on an individual level, not just provide a service. And this way, we can find the most suitable solution for you to manage and maximise client data for increased revenue and growth.

Here to help

In my role leading the Partnership Team, I’m happy to share all my intelligence with the next generation who are willing to learn my style of intelligent coaching and mentoring. There is a great culture of sharing and learning at CTT and we’re fostering that same approach within the Partnership Team.

The Director of Partnerships role is completely new, so I’m developing my own strategy, understanding what excellent service looks like. Bob, Clive, Spencer, Charlotte, Andrew and everyone at CTT are passionate about what we do; I want that to cascade down when we’re talking to our clients. It’s a partnership when clients come on board. The Partnership Team is our gateway at the forefront of client services, so when our members have issues, they can speak to someone knowledgeable.

Vicky Tidder manages the team and is a mine of information. She knows everything. A key aim is to make time to talk to people – not just email – and visit members in person to see and feel what their business is doing, so we can understand how to support them with tailored services – as a partnership – to help them scale their business.

We’ll also aim to have regular touchpoints with members throughout the year to keep you informed of developments coming down the track. Through the Partnership team, we’ll be able to communicate new offerings more clearly to members on a regular basis and give you more opportunities to be involved.

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