Lyfeguard Co-founders on BBC Radio
12th February 2022
Our co-founders, Gary and Fraser Stewart, appeared on Sylvie Blackmore's BBC Radio Surrey and BBC Radio Sussex show on 12th February 2022 discussing Lyfeguard.
You can watch the full interview here.
On the story that prompted the development of Lyfeguard, Gary said:
"It [the idea] was developed a couple of years ago and after a couple of friends of mine sadly died very suddenly. I'm seen as a sensible guy in the group and the families of these two gentlemen asked me to help out with their estate. And to be honest with you, I found it quite a traumatic and difficult situation to deal with. And more than that, the information that they had to sort out these things was all over the place. I felt myself going through their studies and having to go through filing cabinets. I found it quite distressing, especially when I was suffering from a little bit of grief myself and it really was a very sad time. It took me probably about six months or more to sort out each estate. And then all of a sudden, during COVID when there was a heightened awareness of death, I got to thinking, what happens to my family if the same thing happens to me? And the Lyfeguard idea was born."
On how Lyfeguard helps people with life admin and end of life planning, Fraser said:
"Lyfeguard is a solution where people can go on and store all of their important life information, but also be able to access it on the go. I don't know about you, but when you quickly want to find a customer reference number or password scan, it's not easy. So it's the one place you can go and find that quickly. But over and above just information storage, what we've wanted to do is really bring some of that information to life. So the platform uses technology to be able to scan the information stored for areas like expiry dates, and then it can generate handy reminders. So an example of that will be your car insurance: if it's coming up for a new in three months, Lyfeguard will give you a reminder and then you can take action on that and maybe switch your provider to hopefully save some money along the way.
The other bit that we do is use some of the information to be able to bring insights into your financial health. So looking at all the things you store across your bank accounts, your pensions, your investments, and we visualise that on a dashboard. So being able to look into your pensions versus your goal, your investment growth over time, but also your recurring payments. So thinking about subscriptions, being able to identify those that are consistently coming out of your bank potentially, especially in the current cost of living crisis, be able to identify areas to cut back to help our customers hone in on their financial position"