Steve Bish MSWW Fellow IoP CILEx Verified Lawyer

S Bish Estate Planning Ltd is a multi-award-winning company based in Hertfordshire, which specialises in a friendly, jargon-free approach to will-writing and estate planning. Founded in 2022, and now supporting clients all over the UK, we are firm believers in demystifying wills for the public, protecting people who need expert help, and ensuring they get the best estate-planning advice possible. It is for these reasons that we are highly active in charity programmes and community initiatives. We have partnered with CHUMs and write wills for anyone who donates £40 to the charity, which helps vulnerable children, young people and their families. Steve Bish, Founder, is also proactive in speaking personally to rotary clubs, retirement complexes and coffee mornings – giving vital free advice to older people on the importance of writing and updating their wills. A year ago, S Bish Estate Planning consisted solely of Steve himself, offering more than 20 years’ experience as a “one-man band” will writer and estate planner. Now, following incorporation in November 2023, the firm has expanded to include a full-time administrator as well as three independent consultants working alongside Steve. As we have expanded, we have been able to onboard and train our full-time administrator to a high standard of sector knowledge to support our clients, while also embracing a balanced, male-female open-hiring policy. This new intake has contributed to our marked progress in financial performance over the last year, including a healthy increase in turnover. With expanding human and financial resources at our disposal, we have been in a better position to innovate and extend our offering. As such, we have collaborated with local accountancy firm Cubed Consultancy to deliver a well-based employee benefit for their workforce of more than 25 people. Steve volunteered his time to give a talk to employees on the importance of estate planning, while Cubed Consultancy paid for all employees who wished to take up Steve’s offer of will-writing. The scheme proved so popular at Cubed that the same programme is being rolled out to some of their accountancy clients, who have heard about it through word-of-mouth. All of our new employees buy into Steve’s original ethos: professional advice, delivered in a personal way, and always with the clients’ best interests at heart. We stick to this, even in situations where it causes some friction with clients along the way. Furthermore, we have built a considerable digital presence through our website and social media over the last year, and our charity and community work has really helped us amplify our message to a new audience. Internally, we invest substantially in remote IT support as well as cyber protection across all our laptops, using a local company that specialises in digital security.

Last, but not least – as a business, we believe wholeheartedly in supporting not only our employees, but local charities and the wider community as well. Internally, we foster an inclusive, open environment and attitude, and operate an open-door policy wherein employees are encouraged to ask for help whenever they feel they need it. Just like our clients, we consider the wellbeing and best interests of our workforce as a top priority. This is combined with regular training and refresher courses across all areas of legislation, which ensure our expertise is up-to-date. On top of the aforementioned charitable initiatives, we have also built strong collaborations with accountants with employee benefit schemes, and have begun to support the clients of independent financial advisers. We are also proud and active members of the Hertfordshire Chamber of Commerce, a connection that helps us strengthen the business and community ties that are vital for enabling this integration.