A brush with death proved to be a pivotal moment in the career of accountant Jamie Wilson. As his father lay dying of pancreatic cancer in 2009, Wilson faced a complex paperchase for multiple life insurance policies, tax returns, superannuation, share portfolios and a will.
Brisbane-based Wilson decided there had to be a better way of organising one’s personal affairs.
“I couldn’t believe, with all the technology and security measures, that there wasn’t a central location where this information can go. In the event that my dad dropped dead, I would have struggled to find all that information,” Wilson says.
“I thought, ‘How many people face this when they lose a loved one?’ ”
He quit his job managing a $400 million combined portfolio for four wealthy clients and began learning everything he could about software development and encryption, travelling to Sydney and the US to meet with expert developers. Three years later, his handpicked team of developers had produced a cloud document storage service, Your Digital File.
So what sets Wilson’s service apart from global giants Dropbox and Box? The short answer is security. Digital documents stored on Your Digital File can only be accessed with a ‘private key’, which is saved onto the user's device on sign up. This key can also be saved onto a USB stick to allow access to Your Digital File anywhere, anytime.
A copy is held on Your Digital File’s server and another in escrow so that in the event of death or incapacitation, the next of kin can get access to important documents.
Your Digital File has no control over the escrow service, Wilson adds.
The private key is a much safer way to store data than relying on just a username and password, Wilson says. The key must be used each time a user wants to access a file.
Your Digital File also claims a greater use of encryption.
Dropbox allegedly uses a single key to encrypt all files, but each file in Your Digital File is encrypted individually, Wilson says.
“I wanted to ensure that this information is 100 percent confidential with the integrity of having a non-reputable system,” Wilson says.
File sizes are limited to 1GB, not due to any limitations in the technology but rather the frailty of bandwidth connections.
“We’ve capped it to 1GB because a lot of SMEs would upload larger files and then their connections would crash,” Wilson says.
Although the service was borne from a highly personal experience, it has a much broader application in the B2B space. The service is pitching itself as an ideal repository for contracts, powers of attorney, trust deeds, share portfolios, company registers and property, and equipment and vehicle leases.
Wilson is pursuing unorthodox channels. His first customershave been financial planners, a construction company, an engineering firm, and legal and accounting firms.
Users can digitally sign documents securely and with a permanent record, and clients need to provide 100 points of identification before they sign, which is legally binding. An audit trail records every change to a document to ensure its integrity.
“People can sign off on documentation. There’s no fear that, in a 100-page document, the 33rd page has been changed or is missing a signature or is lost in the mail,” Wilson says. Accountants were using the service to send business activity statements (BAS) for signing by clients, and the forms could then be lodged directly with the Australian Taxation Office.
Wilson is happy with the progress. In the third week, 130 people had signed up but that included firms with more than 4,000 clients, each of whom would have to register in order to receive files.
All sales are currently direct but there are plans to introduce a commission-based channel strategy. Two interesting verticals include the car industry and a large telecommunications company, which are concerned about their exposure due to heightened requirements around privacy.
“A corporation can get a million-dollar fine for losing ID information about their customers,” Wilson says.
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