Rockwills turns 25

Today happens to be the 25th anniversary of the Rockwills International Group, the leading private estate planning company in the country. Rockwills was formally established on 23 August 1995 although it had begun operations at least a year earlier.

I can still remember that my association with Rockwills began at about the same time. This was while I was still working in Ban Hin Lee Bank or BHLBank. At that time, I had already been transferred out from the ATM Centre to the Systems & Quality Control Department of the Information Technology Division. Part of my role there as a Unit Head in SQCD was to be responsible for the development of the Operations Manuals which were used as reference materials at the branches.

It was in 1994 or 1995 that the staff was informed that the bank was going into will writing to augment its range of financial services on offer and a representative from a company called Rockwills would be giving a talk to brief us on how they would work together with the bank. SQCD as the operations manual people was required to sit in and learn from the briefing, and afterwards start to work on the manual.

We did come out with the manual on will-writing and this was first used at the Prai and the main branch on Penang island before the will writing service was extended to the Petaling Jaya and Johor Bahru branches. There could be one or two other branches throughout the country that offered this service too, but I am no longer sure.

Interestingly when my wife was working on her Diploma in Management, she used the banking procedures my team had worked out at SQCD for her thesis. I left it to her to write out the whole thesis and only came in to fill in some blanks and confirm the details. 

By the time I left the banking industry in 2001, I was already armed with a considerable amount of knowledge on the will writing service and it was a no-brainer that I decided to sign up as a franchise holder with Rockwills Corporation. I'm still in the business today although the scope has expanded considerably well beyond will writing to include offering trust services too.