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Overdue Advice is the podcast about cash flow strategies to grow your business. Each episode covers an aspect of credit management and accounts receivable. "Legal Collections (and How to Avoid Going to Court)," "Debt Doesn't Die: Estate Collections," and "How Professional Collectors Recover More," are just a few areas covered with rare industry insights. There's no show like it!
Host Bryn Griffiths talks with guests including published authors, veteran collectors, accounts receivable trainers—and Brian Summerfelt, the CEO of MetCredit, North America's leader in ethical business debt collection, to examine all sides of debt recovery. Most importantly, you'll learn how to improve your business' cash flow—and put an end to bad debt forever.
Bryn Griffiths:
Hey. Welcome to overdue Advice. My name is Bryn Griffiths. You know, there's always new things happening out there in the tech world. New apps, new websites, new download stuff, everything that's designed to take pressure off you to try to make your life just a little bit easier. Our friends at Estateably have developed a new innovation for trust and estate administration. Now our podcast goal is to provide cash flow strategies to help grow your business. Plus we also try to help you move forward with greater ease of efficiency as well. Well, today, We're chatting with the CEO of Estateably, Ari Brojde. So let's get going. Hey, Ari. Thanks for joining us on the podcast today. First and foremost, tell us about your company and how you got started.
Ari Brojde:
Absolutely. Happy to do it. It's great to be here. Thank you for having me. so, I founded Estateably back in 2018, with my first cousin, Alex, after our shared grandma passed away. I had been working in the financial services industry, for the better half of my professional career. And in 2015, I left to start a tech company. As I was selling that tech company, which which sought to create a software platform that would allow different financial advisors, whether they were wealth advisors, whether they were lawyers, accountants, collaborate around a comprehensive view of their shared customers, finances, and financial documents. And as I was selling that to those segments, I kept getting a very consistent piece of feedback, which was that the system that we had built to inventories all those important financial documents and assets and liabilities would be very useful for the estate administration process. And so as an advisor in my previous life, I didn't know very much about estate administration. Most of my exposure to estates had to do with the planning side of things. And around the same time in 2015, my grandmother, as I mentioned, passed away. And, in 2017, I reached out to my cousin Alex who was just finishing up his degree at Tufts University in, Boston. I said, “Alex, this is really strange, you know, grandma passed away 2 years ago. She left a super simple estate. you know, she had a small RIF at the time. She had 3 beneficiaries in her will.” There were 3 grandchildren, all of whom get along to this day. And so, you know, we understood that complex estates could take a very long time to settle, but this was as plain vanilla as you can get. And I said, “Alex, it's been 2 years. It's either of 2 things. One, our family's entirely incompetent at at doing this, or there's something larger at play.” And so, given my background in financial services, when I get intellectually curious about stuff, I take courses. Alex was pursuing a degree in human factors engineering, and that's gonna date me because when I was going to school, there was no such thing as human factors engineering. But he said, what we learn is, when you're curious about stuff, go and talk to people that do this day in and day out. And so I was fortunate that I, you know, had a good network, in the financial services industry, amongst lawyers, amongst accountants, and we essentially got out of the building and, you know, approached the these individuals, asked them, hey, if if our family would have retained your services to help with the administration of our grandmother's estate, would it have been any quicker? And the answer we got back time and time again was actually no. you know, the process of settling estates in Canada can be anywhere between 18 and 36 months. So what you're going through is actually quite normal. And then when we asked them, well, what what about this process takes so long, regardless of what industry segment we spoke to with, whether whether it was with the lawyers, whether it was the accountants, whether it was the wealth advisors, they all mentioned the same few pain points and problems. One, you know, a manual and labor intensive process with very little automation, very steep learning curves, in terms of getting up to speed with how to do this work properly, and the inability to collaborate with one another. And then when we saw the kinds of tools, that they were using to kind of make their daily work lives easier. you know, we we felt that there was a real opportunity to come here and and and, and and help out and and make the process a lot easier.
Bryn Griffiths:
Before we get into the nuts and bolts of everything, I'm always curious to findout how people got into this area. And you started this program. Was this something you thought about a long time ago, or did you just kinda it just kind of evolve?
Ari Brojde:
No. It was, you know, as I mentioned before, I was I was building another platform and I kept getting this consistent feedback that it would be very useful for the estate administration process. And, once we heard time and time again the the similarity and the consistency of the feedback, we knew there was something there. And we knew that, with a the demographic shift that's occurring, with the demand that's occurring and will continue to occur for estate administration services, coupled with the fact that there had been very little innovation in the space, according to the people that we interviewed for decades, we felt there was real opportunity to come in and disrupt and help innovate.
Bryn Griffiths:
What's the biggest issue that you find when you talk to people about estates and that kind of thing? Is it just pulling in all this information is that would take so long, so time consuming?
Ari Brojde:
It is. And then in that, I think I think even before that, it's people don't know where to start. And that and and so they have, you know, a lot of people will get the information that they require to kind of proceed by googling, what do I do as an executor or if someone passed away, what are the things I need to take care of, who should I contact? Should I be working with a professional? Should I try this on my own? so once once they have a roadmap, once they can get an understanding, yeah, it's it's discovering the assets of the deceased, even even when, you know, someone has taken the time to plan their estate and to write a will, the will will not necessarily itemize every single piece of asset the deceased is leaving behind. You have to go and discover and, you know, what's interesting is that one would think that with the world going digital over the past 10 or 15 years, it has become easier to identify those assets, but in fact, it's gotten more difficult. In the past, what used to happen was if you were the executor of an estate, you used to just show up at the doorstep of the deceased and wait for the mail to come in and based on what kind of mail would come in, you'd be able to piece together the assets of the individual. Oh, the person had an account at CIBC or a, a brokerage account at at at at BMO. Now that everything's digital and people are going paperless, without the access to their emails, it's very difficult to find out those assets.
Bryn Griffiths:
Would it be true to say that while looking for efficiencies, you find more deficiencies?
Ari Brojde:
Yes. It's actually it's actually a a a very good point. And and, you know, one of the things that we've done really well with the company is just to zip our mouths and listen to the pain points and problems of our customers. And it's exactly, as you say, that you'll guide them along. You'll you'll ask them, "Hey, well, you know, what are the what are the things that keep you up at night? What are the biggest problems and pain points you have?" And then you can just work off the those, off their responses and and, indeed, uncover more deficiencies as you go along.
Bryn Griffiths:
So how do you work with a company like MetCredit, who have been around for a long time? Brian and his staff do a a fabulous job. One, how did you get together with them? And now how do you work with them?
Ari Brojde:
That's a great question. So, Estateably's goal is to be the go-to platform software platform of choice to help professionals, administer estates. And the administration of estates takes you through 100 of steps and sub-processes required to complete the administration of the state. One of the essential things that the most professionals should be doing They don't always do it, but they should be doing is to advertise for creditors. the reason that, that that's important is because the executor of any estate is held liable for missteps in the estate, but moreover, if assets are being distributed to beneficiaries, before, allowing for claims against the estate to be paid. There was a competitive product in the market, when we started, that was founded by Patrick Hartford. The product was called Notice Connect, which was, sold, I think, in 2019 or 2020 to a company called Dye & Durham. And, when we decided when we we started getting a lot of feedback from customers saying that, hey, we love your state administration platform, one thing you don't currently have is the ability for us to publish notices to creditors directly from our application. So it's something that we looked into, something that we thought we could build pretty pretty quickly, something that we could compete against Notice Connect with. And, like like any business, when you are going up against an incumbent. It's super important to obtain credibility. And, that's what we have with MetCredit. We wanted to work with the biggest company in Canada when it came to the debt collection and, and MetCredit was it. And so we reached out to them and said, hey, we're coming out with a product that's going to be allowing for our our clients, and executives to to advertise for creditors to file these notices and and we want you guys to to to be, part of it. And so, that's how we started working with them.
Bryn Griffiths:
We live in a society where it's all about speed. Right? And so I gotta think that this works great for you. Works great for MetCredit. Works great for the end consumer. Does it not?
Ari Brojde:
Absolutely. I mean, you hit you hit the nail on the head. That's the name of the game and when I was listening to the to the Overview Advice podcast from 2019, one of the things that Jojo Staples mentioned was a problem was when executors try to avoid the issue of claims against the estate and what really benefits that by by dealing with the problem up front, it really benefits everyone. It benefits the professionals that are advising the executors, because, again, the executors are are are themselves liable for paying out assets before advertising for the creditors. it also helps the beneficiaries know that, once they get their assets that that another individual will not have a claim against those assets. So it's really, it's really a benefit to everyone You mentioned 2019. How much does it change from 2019 to this 2023? Yeah. It's changed a little bit. I I mean, I think Notice Connect was, was really important in terms of moving the needle forward in terms of innovation and digitization. I mean, one of the things that they were able to latch onto was the fact that in the past, typically when one needed to advertise for creditors, you had to do it in a newspaper of the locality where the person where the deceased person resided. And and we know that you know, kind of circulation and membership of of of the newspapers have kind of been in decline for for several years. So you could post these notices and newspapers and it would fall on on not deaf ears, but blind eyes, perhaps. And it was also very costly. The newspapers would charge a a a tremendous amount, and then you'd have publish it, not only not not a single time, because obviously you want people to be able to see that someone has passed away. And if they had a claim, to come forward, so we had to publish it multiple times. And every time you published it in the newspaper, it costs the estate. So you were able to do it with Notice Connect, very simply, one time, it would be in a database that could be queried by any creditor potentially. And, it really serves to benefit everyone. And so, Ontario was one of the first provinces to adopt the ability to file notices online as opposed to just through the newspapers. We've seen, since then, Saskatchewan also pass legislation allowing for online. And, I think it's gonna be a trend that you're gonna continue seeing not only throughout Canada, but all in the US as well.
Bryn Griffiths:
This is the thing that just drives me crazy to imagine how big this is and, again, getting all that information. Is that just my average guy way of looking at it? Is it easier than that, or is it way more complex than that?
Ari Brojde:
No. I mean, look, I I think it's and I think the status that 70% of Canadians pass away with some form of debt, whether that's mortgage debt, credit card debt, car loans, other types of loans. That amount is, typically on average around $30,000 of debt. So, this affects everyone. Estateably has been in business for, we've been commercialized for about three years now. we've helped settle over 12,000 estates, and, we've seen over $365,000,000 of of debt being tracked on our platform. So those numbers totally jive and it's an important thing. Right? The last thing an executor wants is to is to distribute assets to beneficiaries, and then a claim comes forward after them. Because then the executor is held liable for the payment of those debts. So the process is pretty pretty simple. File a notice. This is called advertising for creditors. So you file a notice in the newspaper or online through Estateably's platform or through Notice Connect in Canada. And typically, depending on the jurisdiction that you're operating in, some can be 30 days, some 60 days. You you make it known that the person is deceased and the creditor has that time period, 30 to 60 days to to come forward and file claims against the estate. If no one has come forward after the time that is written in the notice, then the executor can distribute assets, and relieve him him or herself of that kind of financial liability for having done so.
Bryn Griffiths:
The relationship with MetCredit, over over the last few years. How how is that working? It sounds like there's great communication between the two parties.
Ari Brojde:
Yeah. absolutely. So, when we when we first launched our our notice to notice to creditors product, the the the biggest piece of feedback was was, "Is this the same as Notice Connect? Is this legit?" And as I mentioned before, working with MetCredit was to gain that credibility. And and ever since we came out with our press release, talking about our partnership, the number of files that get done in Estateably with filing a Notice to Creditors has exploded. And our goal alongside MetCredit is to get that number to as close to a 100% as possible.
Bryn Griffiths:
We often talk about fear. People are always afraid. Right? They're often afraid to pick up the phone when they see it's MetCredit, yet All they do is solve problems. Do you read the same way?
Ari Brojde:
100%. Like I mentioned before, it is an important part of the estate administration process, being able to pay off the debts of the deceased. It's first in line, before assets can get distributed. So it's part of the overall distribution schema of any estate to get the debts paid off before any whether that's cash requests, specific requests, or residual requests can be paid off. And as quickly as possible. And that's and that's the thing. Right? The biggest comment when we were doing our our interviews with professionals. We said, "what is your client's biggest problem?" And they said, they want their money now. And that's what Estateably is here to help with. We're help we're here to help professionals get their client, the the beneficiaries of the estates, their their inheritance as soon as possible.
Bryn Griffiths:
I always love asking people this. It's great now. How do you make it better? Like, what do you what do you gotta do?
Ari Brojde:
There's no end. I mean, like, I think I think the the the the key answer to that your question is just re-listen to the problems and pain points of your customers. Don't assume that you that that you know, you've done everything because as you as you rightly mentioned earlier, you find more deficiencies than than efficiencies in in in the process. So I'll give you a great example. One time, one client came to us with feedback saying, hey, you know, at the end of every month, I need to take a bank or brokerage statement that's in paper form. The executor gives it to me and, in Canada, and in other places in the world, estates have this concept of principal and income or capital and revenue, and you need to be able to split every single transaction that occurs from the estate in between those 2 categories. And so I've got to take every single, you know, transaction line by line. I've got to input them into an Excel sheet or or something else. And then I have to split every single transaction to those 2 accounts, and that takes me so long. For every statement I get, it must take me or 5 hours to do it. So, we developed a bank and brokerage statement parser that allows someone to just upload that brokered statement into our platform. We use AI and natural language processing to to read, to understand those transactions. We pull them all into an accounting report and it make it very easily with a click a button, our users can indicate whether it's a principal transaction or an income transaction, and then they can generate super lengthy and tedious reports with a click of a button and and pass those on to beneficiaries. So, this is an example of the kind of innovation that's possible when you have a great team working with you.
Bryn Griffiths:
So when you have a team like MetCredit and yourself, what's the biggest benefit for for anybody who wants to be part of partnership? Is it just convenience and efficiency?
Ari Brojde:
Efficiency and speed, then that's the name of the game as you mentioned.
Bryn Griffiths:
Okay. Now I gotta ask a little bit about you because, you know, I always knew I wanted to be a broadcaster. And so 35 plus years, I I've done well. I'm happy. this what you've always wanted to do? Or did you stumble into this? Cause I know some people just stumble into it and we're great at or are still great at what they're doing.
Ari Brojde:
No. As I mentioned at the at the top of the podcast, my background is in financial services. That was something I thought I would do forever. And then after the financial crisis, I started seeing the, emergence of robo-advisors in in the US. Not so much in Canada. We didn't have a company called Wealthsimple yet in Canada at the time, but I started to ask myself whether I would have a job in in 10 or 15 years, and and I started seeing the benefits of of software to help out with the the financial jobs. And, that that led me to become a tech entrepreneur in 2015. And, as I recounted a little before, this this new venture Estateably is a is a product of a pivot from a previous venture.
Bryn Griffiths:
Being in broadcasting, I've learned that I have to reinvent myself continually, especially when you take a look at the business journalists who are losing jobs left, right, and center. Do you have to continually take a look at what you're doing and think to yourself, I might have to pivot a little bit to go in this direction, go that direction. Is is that what it's all about, for you?
Ari Brojde:
Yeah. I mean, like, you should always be open to feedback and and and inputs, that are constantly changing. I think one of the things that has been responsible for Estateably's success is we had a very robust vision for what the company should be doing today and where it should be in 5 years. And that's kind of a north star that vision keeps us honest. It keeps us focused on where we want to go as a company, and and I think that's helped a lot. And so, yeah, there are pivots along the way. There's curveballs that get thrown. There's changes in legislation that sometimes occur and that makes us reconsider some of that vision, but overall, we had a vision for the company from day 1 and we're we're we're laser focused on hitting it.
Bryn Griffiths:
Hey. That's it for today's episode of overdue advice. Big thank you to Ari for sharing his insight on today's podcast. It's really easy to find us online. MetCredit is on Facebook, instagram, linkedin, and X @MetCredit. You can also check out Brian Summerfelt's blog. That's easy to find too. It's blog.metcredit.com. And don't forget the website also includes numerous helpful tools and calculators to assess your business debt risk. We also wanna hear from you so Subscribe, like, or leave us a review on this or any of our podcasts, and make sure you share this podcast with your friends or business associates. You can also drop us a line at overdueadvice@medcredit.com. Overdue Advice, the podcast about cash flow strategies to grow your business. I'm Bryn Griffiths.