For many of your clients, gaining quick access to vital financial and personal information in the event of an emergency might pose a problem.

Three-quarters of people surveyed in a recent national poll conducted for the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association Inc. said their critical financial and personal information would be “somewhat accessible” or “difficult to find” in an emergency.

Only about one-quarter of survey respondents said their vital documents would be easy to obtain in an emergency.

SERVICE FOR CLIENTS

The CLHIA has developed a new tool aimed at solving this worrying problem: a free, downloadable tool to help people record and save their important personal and financial information in one, easy-to-find location.

Called Virtual Shoebox, the application asks users to record the location of key documents, such as insurance policies, wills and powers of attorney, as well as social insurance numbers, passport numbers, health records, home-alarm codes and computer passwords.

Virtual Shoebox is an updated, digital version of a paper-based document developed more than 20 years ago called the Shoebox Guide, says Wendy Hope, vice president, external relations, with CLHIA. “Many of the [same] elements are there, but we have updated it for modern times. I think [the digital version] is much more user-friendly.”

Financial advisors have been asking for a digital version of the Shoebox Guide, Hope says, and the CLHIA intends to spread the word about Virtual Shoebox among the advisor community.

“We are in the process of developing a list of groups to let them know that we have developed this tool,” Hope says. “And, of course, advisors are going to be at the top of the list.”

Sterling Rempel, certified financial planner and president of Future Values Estate and Financial Planning in Calgary, says the CLHIA’s new tool is a good development: “I can see this as a service we can provide to clients.”

Future Values could enter the information it has on its clients (with permission, of course), Rempel adds, then send it back to the clients so they to protect the information with their own password.

A STRESSFUL TIME

Just how complicated our password-protected modern lives have become — and the challenges that presents to advisors — was starkly illustrated for Rempel recently, when a client couple were killed in a vehicular accident. “They had adult children but no will,” Rempel says, “and the wife’s sister is now looking after it.”

Besides determining where the couple’s assets should go, the sister has had to spend “thousands of dollars on IT professionals” to open the couple’s password-protected accounts.

“I was, frankly, thrilled to see the password information that was on this [Virtual] Shoebox,” says Rempel, who notes that he has a list of more than 100 password-protected accounts himself. “My wife knows about that, and my assistant knows how to get that open. But my kids wouldn’t.”

Scott Plaskett, CFP and presi-dent of Ironshield Financial Planning in Toronto, also likes the idea of Virtual Shoebox but warns that users need to ensure that the master document “is secure and kept in a safe place” but still can be found easily by people in the event of an emergency.

“[An emergency] is a very stressful time,” Plaskett says. “And a document like that can really reduce the stress level.”

After reviewing the Virtual Shoebox download, Plaskett says, the requested documents are the same sort of information an advi-sor requires in order to work with clients. “Because we are comprehensive financial planners,” he says, “all of that information is what we are looking for.”

Ironshield typically provides a checklist to new clients and asks them to provide this key financial information at the second meeting, says Plaskett: “When they come, they generally have two or three briefcases full of documents. And the comment, more often than not, is: ‘This was a great exercise, because now I have actually put together in one place everything that is important.’ So, it was interesting when I saw that [Virtual Shoebox] is, in essence, what we have created.”

Virtual Shoebox prompts users to conduct a document-gathering exercise, Plaskett adds, that creates a real and immediate feeling of relief and satisfaction in clients.

But the list must be maintained. “The challenge is [in] keeping it updated,” he says. “You have to be somewhat disciplined to do that, or you have to hire someone disciplined to do it for you.” IE