Farewill lands £20m investment

Will-writing start-up Farewill has raised £20m in investment to fund expansion and product innovation.

The latest cash injection takes investment in the online will writing service to £30m to date.

Most of the £20m was from Highland Europe, with additional funding from Keen Ventures, Rich Pierson of Headspace, Broadhaven Ventures, and Venture Founders join previous investors - among them Augmentum Fintech, Taavet Hinrikus (TransferWise) and Kindred Capital.

Founded was in 2015 by CEO Dan Garrett and co-founder Tom Rogers, the platform guides users through a series of questions, all navigated online and a team of in-house specialists are available seven days a week when customers need to speak directly.

It takes 15 minutes to write a will on the platform, an average of 24 hours to get the document checked and it costs from £90.

Farewill charges a single, fixed fee starting at £595 for probate. And an application takes seven days, compared to the UK average of three weeks.

The company also arranges cremations from £980, compared to the £3,250 an average UK cremation costs.

The organisation claims to be the largest will writer in the UK, responsible for 1 in 10 wills.

Garrett (pictured) said: “The latest investment from Highland Europe shows their conviction in our vision for fairer, more transparent services in this space. It means we can build on what we’ve started, growing our world-class team and designing easy-to-use tools that help people during incredibly tough times.”

Highland Europe partner Stan Laurent added: “For too long, the wills and funeral industry has been largely geared towards profit over purpose. Since our first meeting with Dan, we knew that Farewill had the ingredients to radically disrupt the industry.”

The investment will be used to fund expansion in the UK, as well as ongoing service improvement and product