Life Ledger has received a £250,000 equity investment from the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Investment Fund (CIOSIF) as part of a £1.25m funding round to expand its online service to consolidate and automate death notifications.

The CIOSIF investment, along with additional private equity, will be used to recruit new staff in sales, marketing and tech support in order to accelerate new users and to build partnerships with service providers.

Following a death, the recently bereaved face a huge administrative burden during an emotionally difficult time. Life Ledger solves this problem by consolidating the notification process with a free to use service that removes the need to have the same difficult conversation over and over again.

Life Ledger currently sends notifications to over 900 UK companies across sectors ranging from banks and pension providers to gas, water, telecoms and social media. The company’s platform has been built with four different groups in mind: the recently bereaved who need to notify the service providers, professional notifiers such as solicitors or probate firms, pre-registrants who wish to organise their affairs before their own death, and service providers who need to know about a customer’s death.

Life Ledger has seen significant interest from service providers who recognise the potential time savings for their own customer service teams, and the goodwill that can come from the ease of transactions for the deceased’s family. Life Ledger says professional users will also find the facility quicker, easier and more comprehensive to use than any other service currently available.

Founder and CEO of Life Ledger, Tremayne Carew Pole, comments: “This timely investment from CIOSIF will support the recruitment and training of new staff. Due to the sensitive nature of the business, our customer service operators will be the core to our success. In addition, new sales and marketing staff will allow us to grow brand recognition both directly to consumers and companies, as well as creating partnerships with other businesses that will benefit from referrals.”

There are upwards of 600,000 deaths in the UK every year, and 25 million over 50s who would benefit from some form of end-of-life planning. Life Ledger aims to have a significant market share of the death notifications for this group while also providing a service to ease the burden for bereaved families. There is also potential to expand the market through worldwide rollout.

Meg Salt, Investment Manager at The FSE Group, the appointed CIOSIF Fund Manager, added: “We were extremely impressed by the pro-active, committed and experienced founders of Life Ledger who have created a solution to a recognised problem in this market. We look forward to enabling the company to capitalise on their market leading solution and the considerable interest from service providers, to generate increased traffic and drive growth.”

The £40m Cornwall & Isles of Scilly Investment Fund provides debt and equity finance from £25,000 to £2 million to help growing small businesses across the region. It has been established by the British Business Bank in partnership with the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP).

Ken Cooper, Managing Director from the British Business Bank, said: “This deal shows how the fund can help leverage additional private investment as part of a larger funding round, making sure the business has access to the finance it needs to scale up, at the time it needs it.”

LEP director John Acornley, and chair of the CIOSIF Advisory Board, said: “The Life Ledger team have taken their personal experience of handling bereavement and created an innovative business that not only helps families and loved ones at a difficult time, but also adds value to service providers when administering a deceased person’s affairs.”

CIOSIF is supported financially by the European Union using funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020.

For more information about the Cornwall & Isles of Scilly Investment Fund including how to apply, please visit www.ciosif.co.uk  or follow the fund on Twitter at @CIOSIFBBB2

Read more about Life Ledger at www.lifeledger.com