If you are an IFA or other finance professional governed by the FCA, you are required by the FCA, as part of your fact-finding exercise, to advise your client of the importance of having an up-to-date will and/or Lasting Powers of Attorney in place. You could be open to criticism if your client were to die ‘intestate’ (without a valid will in place).
We have three different ways of working with IFAs and other professional referrers :
You may simply wish to refer your client on to a trusted, highly professional source to ensure their estate planning needs are met. In this case, we would ask you introduce us to your client by email or by passing us their contact details (with their permission) so that we are able to get in touch with them for an initial no-obligation chat. We would then, hopefully, move on to booking your client in for an appointment, taking their instructions and drawing up their legal documents. We will provide you with an update at each key stage throughout the process.
You may sign up to our ‘Professional Referrer Scheme’ which operates in exactly the same way as above, but for each referral you send us which results in us signing a client up, you will receive 20% of the final client invoice by way of a referral fee.
Finally, you may chose to work with us in a more pro-active manner by completing our will and/or LPA instruction sheet yourself, with your client, and then forwarding a complete set of instructions to us to complete all of the legal work. To comply with section 1.5 of the IPW’s Code of Conduct, we would provide you with relevant and effective training to ensure that, in assisting us with the provision of estate planning services, you are familiar with the Code and our responsibilities under it. If you choose to work with us in this way you would receive 50% of the final client invoice.