Pax Animi’s core mission is to automate the intricate process of estate planning, which is traditionally burdened by extensive lawyer consultations and high costs. While wills can be created online now, automation of something as nuanced as estate planning is a first in Australia.
The platform works by screening clients via a questionnaire with the outcome of being able to produce a legally binding estate plan that adeptly aligns with the individual context and preferences of each client.
Recognizing the limitations of their legacy system, Pax Animi saw room for improvement in the user experience (UX). They understood that better collaboration with a new technology partner could resolve previous challenges and meet their standards.
Pax Animi reached out to Experience Digital to leverage their expertise in redesigning and elevating the platform’s capabilities.
Adopting a greenfield project approach, the team designed a revitalised version of the platform from the ground up.
Our task involved transforming the initial prototype into an application that offers an inviting and user-friendly experience. We began with a fresh design and refined the workflows and interactions for the users (Clients, Organization, and Admins).
The original application, constructed using C++, led to an unnecessarily intricate and over-engineered product. To address this, we reevaluated the system requirements and strategically planned a reconstruction. The new approach embraced a web-friendly technology stack rooted in Typescript, aligning our solution with modern industry standards.
The most complex part of the system was the document generator. Our team re- engineered this to use templates that produced fully custom legal documents for Pax Animi’s clients. This revamped system is simpler to update and efficiently utilises cloud- hosted templates. With this significant update, modifying a template is now as effortless as editing a text document, eliminating the need for intricate algorithms.
The PaxAnimi architecture is designed to make full use of AWS services, ensuring a secure, scalable, and efficient platform for estate planning automation. The process begins with users accessing the platform through a DNS-resolved domain managed by Amazon Route 53, which directs traffic via an Internet Gateway into the AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). Within the VPC, user requests are processed through Amazon API Gateway, serving as the entry point for all API calls and efficiently routing these to the appropriate backend services.
AWS Lambda functions are deployed at the backend to handle serverless computing tasks. These functions manage data processing, execute application logic, and interface with other AWS services, such as Amazon RDS and Amazon S3. Amazon RDS (PostgreSQL) is utilised for managing the platform’s relational database needs, ensuring data integrity, security, and high availability across multiple availability zones. Meanwhile, Amazon S3 offers a scalable and secure storage solution for static assets like documents and images, making them readily accessible to the application.
The architecture includes a NAT Gateway, allowing private subnets to securely access the internet without exposing underlying instances. Security and compliance are reinforced through a range of AWS services: AWS CloudWatch monitors the application’s performance and logs events, GuardDuty provides continuous threat detection, and AWS WAF protects against web application attacks. AWS CloudTrail logs all API activity and user actions for auditing and compliance, while AWS Certificate Manager manages SSL/TLS certificates to secure data in transit.
This AWS-based architecture supports the scalability and operational efficiency of PaxAnimi while ensuring that sensitive user data is handled securely, in line with industry standards and regulatory requirements. The design promotes flexibility, allowing the platform to adapt to growing user demands while maintaining high levels of performance and availability.
Our redesign delivered significant improvements for Pax Animi. The fresh design enhanced user experience, streamlining workflows for the both admins and users. The revamped document generator produced tailored legal documents, ensuring precision. No more messing around with complex algorithms since the new cloud-hosted templates now make updates effortless.
PaxAnimi® takes time, cost and stress out of will-making and estate planning. The platform provides a lawyerless, online solution to willmakers for the preparation of their will and estate planning documents if they fit a profile in the Screening Tool.
The company was founded by three lawyers, who throughout their 35 years of experience, found out that most people want very similar things from their estate planning.
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