South African startup Cliqtech is quietly reshaping the country’s insurance and financial services landscape through its pioneering digital will solution, SmartWill.
Founded in 2016, the enterprise digital will provider identified a long-standing structural weakness in estate planning, one that was “paper-heavy, costly, and largely inaccessible to the average South African.”
By digitising the will creation process and making it scalable for both individuals and institutions, the company has moved from early rejection to becoming the partner of choice for leading insurers.
What began as a survival pivot has evolved into a high-impact FidTech operation now protecting billions of rands in family legacy while positioning itself for continental expansion.
What Is Cliqtech and What Does It Do?
Cliqtech is a specialist enterprise digital will provider operating at the intersection of law, technology, and financial services. Its flagship product, SmartWill, launched in 2018 as a first-of-its-kind digital will solution in South Africa.
The platform enables individuals to create legally sound wills through a seamless digital process, eliminating much of the administrative burden traditionally associated with estate planning.
The company’s founding vision was rooted in access and inclusion.
As CEO Zale Hechter explained, “We identified a critical failure in the financial services sector, wills and estate planning. It was paper-heavy, costly, and largely inaccessible to the average South African.”
In response, Cliqtech developed a mission to “democratise dignity” by ensuring that “every South African, regardless of their social status, could easily access a legally sound will to protect their family’s wealth and legacy.”
By combining deep legal expertise with agile technology systems, the company has positioned itself as a specialist in secure, compliant, and scalable fiduciary platforms.
The COVID-19 Surge: From Nice-to-Have to Essential Service
Although SmartWill launched in 2018, its rapid acceleration came during the COVID-19 pandemic. The lockdown period triggered widespread reflection about mortality and financial preparedness, driving unprecedented demand for estate planning services.
SmartWill experienced what Hechter described as a massive spike in demand, with wills shifting “from a nice-to-have to an essential service.”
The pandemic created what the company calls a digital awakening in South Africa, as individuals increasingly sought remote, secure, and legally compliant financial solutions.
This surge validated both the product-market fit and the urgency of estate planning accessibility.
The Pivot That Changed Everything
Cliqtech’s trajectory was not without early setbacks. Initially, the company built its platform as a business-to-business (B2B) solution, targeting corporate insurers and financial institutions.
However, anticipated partnerships did not materialise. Hechter candidly acknowledged this miscalculation.
“We needed to face our ‘Field of Dreams’ fallacy. We initially developed a business to business (BSB) system believing that if we build it, the corporates will come. They didn’t and we needed to survive the challenge of facing that rejection.”
Faced with this reality, Cliqtech pivoted strategically to a business-to-consumer (B2C) model, launching SmartWill directly to individuals. The response was immediate and significant.
“After onboarding thousands of happy South African users the corporates started to pay attention,” Hechter said.
The pivot proved decisive. Demonstrated consumer success shifted corporate perception and transformed market credibility.
From Zero Interest to Blue-Chip Partnerships
With strong consumer adoption as proof of concept, Cliqtech successfully converted its momentum into enterprise partnerships. The company now works with major insurers including Metropolitan, 1Life, BetterSure, Discovery Life, Hollard, and Workerslife.
“We have moved from chasing meetings to being the partner of choice for industry giants. A dream come true,” Hechter noted.
The company has since built a multidisciplinary team of developers, insurance and legal experts, and client support professionals to support its expanding footprint.
Through white-label solutions, insurers can integrate SmartWill into their existing systems and offer digital will services under their own brand names.
“With our ‘white-label’ solutions major insurers can seamlessly plug into their systems and create new revenue streams by offering much needed wills to their clients under their own brand,” Hechter explained.
This model allows financial service providers to expand their product offerings without navigating the complexities of legal compliance and administrative overhead.
Bridging Legal Complexity with Seamless Technology
Cliqtech describes itself as a rare hybrid, combining legal depth with technological agility. The company’s platforms are designed to meet strict fiduciary and compliance requirements while delivering intuitive user experiences.
“We combine deep legal expertise with agile tech stacks, a rare hybrid, and our reputation is growing as a global leader in FidTech,” Hechter said.
As part of its growth strategy, Cliqtech aims to extend its white-label services beyond South Africa into other African and emerging markets where estate planning services remain limited.
The company’s broader ambition is not only commercial but systemic, addressing structural gaps in financial protection across underserved populations.
Protecting Families from Financial Ruin
Beyond revenue growth and industry partnerships, Cliqtech frames its impact in socio-economic terms. The absence of a will can result in frozen assets, prolonged legal disputes, and severe financial strain for surviving families.
“We aren’t just selling code; we are solving a socio-economic crisis,” Hechter emphasised.
“When a breadwinner dies without a will, assets freeze, and families suffer. Every time our platform generates a will, we are potentially saving a family from financial ruin and it’s that purpose that fuels us.”
Today, Cliqtech reports that it is protecting billions of rands in legacy wealth for ordinary South African families, a testament to how legal technology innovation can serve both market efficiency and social impact.
As estate planning continues to evolve in the digital age, Cliqtech’s journey from startup rejection to industry leadership underscores the power of strategic adaptation, technological precision, and mission-driven entrepreneurship in reshaping essential financial services.
Talking Points
Cliqtech’s trajectory reflects a compelling case study in strategic adaptability and market timing, yet its long-term success will depend on how effectively it navigates regulatory complexity, market saturation, and cross-border legal variations as it scales.
The company correctly identified a structural inefficiency in estate planning and leveraged COVID-19 as an inflection point to accelerate digital adoption, demonstrating strong product-market fit and an astute pivot from an unsuccessful B2B-first model to a consumer-validation strategy.
Its white-label partnerships with major insurers signal institutional credibility and a defensible competitive position within South Africa’s emerging FidTech space.
However, sustained growth will require maintaining rigorous legal compliance standards, investing in cybersecurity to protect sensitive estate data, and ensuring that affordability and accessibility remain central as it expands into other African markets where legal frameworks differ significantly.
While its social-impact narrative is persuasive and strategically aligned with financial inclusion goals, the true test will lie in whether Cliqtech can institutionalize trust at scale in a sector where reputational risk, regulatory scrutiny, and consumer confidence are paramount.
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