Investment Instructions for a Trusted Friend: A Perth Carer’s Plan for a Parent’s Shares, ETFs and Crypto

You’re helping an aging parent in Perth get their affairs in order. There’s no close family nearby — the person they trust most is an old friend who has agreed to be the nominated point of contact if capacity slips or worse. Between the CommSec account, a parcel of bank shares from the eighties, an ETF holding bought through a newer broker, and “a bit of Bitcoin” set up during the pandemic, nobody outside your parent has a complete picture. You want their friend to have a clean instruction set: what exists, where it’s held, who to call. Not the passwords. Not the seed phrase. Just the map.

The problem

Australian investment portfolios held by older adults are often spread across decades of platforms. ASIC’s MoneySmart guidance on wills and estate planning makes the point plainly: assets that the executor or attorney can’t find can’t be claimed. CHESS-sponsored holdings sit under a HIN at one broker; issuer-sponsored legacy shares sit under an SRN with the share registry; an ETF may sit at a different broker entirely; and crypto sits outside the regulated system altogether.

For crypto specifically, ASIC warns that lost keys mean lost coins — there is no central registry, no consumer protection scheme, and no “forgot password” path. But the family still benefits from knowing the holding existed: they can stop searching, stop paying for forensic recovery attempts that won’t work, and close that chapter of the estate cleanly.

Your parent’s trusted friend doesn’t need credentials. They need to know that a CommSec account exists under a specific HIN, that there are issuer-sponsored CBA shares from 1991 under an SRN at Computershare, that there’s a Vanguard ETF position at a second broker, and that there’s a hardware wallet in the bottom drawer holding a Bitcoin balance that — without the seed phrase — is effectively unrecoverable. That last point matters: it tells the friend not to waste estate funds chasing it.

What the Digital Legacy Vault does

The Digital Legacy Vault is an asset-instruction register. The simplified version (built for individuals and families) records, per investment line: the issuer or exchange name, the broker or platform, the HIN or SRN or account identifier, and notes about where supporting paperwork lives. Your parent’s nominated friend sees only the investments module you’ve prepared for them, only when release rules trigger.

The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what exists and how your parent’s trusted friend can find it — not the keys, recovery phrases, or hardware wallet PINs. No passwords. No exchange logins. No seed words. That boundary is deliberate: it’s what keeps the Digital Legacy Vault outside the Australian Financial Services Licence regime (Corporations Act Part 7.6) and outside AUSTRAC’s AML/CTF reporting obligations. The vault is not a financial product, not a custodian, and not an advice service. It’s a register.

How it works

  1. You (or your parent, with you assisting) add each investment line to the vault — broker, HIN or SRN, issuer, approximate purchase context, and the registry or exchange involved.
  2. You name the trusted friend as the recipient for the investments module. They accept the role in writing — the vault records consent, which aligns with how personal information about a third party should be handled under the Australian Privacy Principles.
  3. For the crypto holding, you record what exists (e.g. “Bitcoin held on a Ledger device, kept in home safe”) and explicitly note that no keys or seed words are stored anywhere in the vault.
  4. Release rules trigger on the events you choose — capacity loss confirmed by medical certificate, or death. The friend is notified and sees only the investments module.
  5. The friend takes the instruction set to the executor or attorney, who then contacts each broker, registry, and (for crypto) confirms the holding is unrecoverable without the keys held in the physical device.

Why this matters in Perth

Perth carers often coordinate parental affairs across long distances — east-coast brokers, WA-based share registries’ postal addresses, and exchanges with no Australian office. When the nominated person is a friend rather than family, they have no automatic standing to ring a broker and ask “what does my friend hold with you?” — they need a written instruction set with identifiers. For older Perth investors who bought CBA, Telstra or Woodside shares during the demutualisations and floats of the 1990s and held them issuer-sponsored ever since, the SRN is often the only thread connecting the holding to the holder. Lose the SRN, and the registry search becomes painful. The vault keeps that thread intact.

Sources

Join the waitlist

Join the waitlist — first access when the Digital Legacy Vault opens for Perth carers

We’re opening waitlist access in tranches. Sign up to be notified when Perth carers planning on behalf of an aging parent can register a first investments module. The Digital Legacy Vault holds instructions about what exists and how your parent’s trusted friend can find it — not the keys, recovery phrases, or hardware wallet PINs.