Where your advice stops and ours starts
Where the line sits between your firm's mortgage and protection advice and Equity & General's pension and investment advice, with the client questions that fall on each side.
Where the line sits between your firm's mortgage and protection advice and Equity & General's pension and investment advice, with the client questions that fall on each side.
An accountant who introduces a client to a financial planner is clearly not giving financial advice. A mortgage broker gives regulated advice every day, so the question is what you are advising on.
Your firm's permissions cover mortgages, and may cover protection. Advice on pensions, on investments and on the investment side of estate planning needs different permissions, which is what Equity & General holds and what the introduction is for.
A conversation usually sits on one side. Take care where a mortgage question and a pension or investment question are the same question.
These come up in ordinary broking conversations, and each one has a pension or investment decision inside it.
The mortgage half is yours. The comparison with a pension contribution is investment advice.
This is a pension decision with a mortgage consequence, and it belongs with the planner.
The equity release is yours if you hold that permission. The comparison with drawing on investments is not.
Comparing a property against a pension is investment advice, even though the property side is familiar to you.
Where it should be invested is a question for the planner, even though it changes the mortgage you recommend.
Describing what you can see is inside your permissions. Recommending the pension or investment half of a decision is not.
Wording you can use“The mortgage side of that I can help with. Whether that money is better in the pension is a different kind of advice, and it needs someone qualified to give it. I can introduce you to our planner, and I will stay involved on the mortgage.”
That wording keeps the two decisions separate and gives the client a route to advice on both.
An appointed representative of a network has a further check to make. The network agreement usually says where investment and pension business may go, and some networks restrict it.
Read that agreement before making the first introduction outside the network, and ask the network directly if it is not clear.
A combined question often concerns a large financial decision. If you answer only the mortgage half, the client may get no advice on the other half.
The introduction lets the client get advice on both halves without your firm stepping outside what it is authorised to do.
What appointed representative firms should check in their network agreement before making introductions to an outside adviser.
Read it
Roles, the first ninety days, training your mortgage advisers, and what to measure once the partnership is running.
Read it
Six moments on a mortgage case file and wording for each that raises the planning question while staying inside your permissions.
Read itYour firm keeps the mortgage and protection advice. Equity & General gives the pension, investment and estate planning advice, and a named partnership manager sets the arrangement up with you.