Joined-up advice
What changes for the client and for you when the mortgage advice and the wealth advice come from people who talk to each other and work from the same picture.
What changes for the client and for you when the mortgage advice and the wealth advice come from people who talk to each other and work from the same picture.
A client's financial life can be split between professionals who do not speak to each other. A mortgage broker arranges the borrowing. An adviser, if there is one, looks after a pension somewhere. An accountant sees the tax. A solicitor writes the will. None of them sees the whole picture.
At the point of a mortgage, you gather more current and more complete financial information about a client than they give to anyone else. Usually that information is used for the mortgage and then filed. Joined-up advice uses it for the wider advice as well.
A client remortgages with you, and the job is done well. Their pension sits with an old workplace provider and has not been looked at in years. Their life cover, if they have any, was bought online and never matched to their actual commitments. Their accountant sees the tax return but not the mortgage, and certainly not the pension.
Each professional does their own job, but none of them sees the whole picture, so gaps between the pieces go unnoticed. The client repeats their circumstances to each professional in turn and may assume someone is joining it up when nobody is.
To arrange a mortgage you collect income, outgoings, assets, debts, dependants, plans for the future and attitude to the payments. It is current, because you collected it days ago.
That information is what a financial planner needs to give good advice. In the usual arrangement it does its job for the mortgage and is then set aside, even though it is the same information the wider advice would be built on.
A Pecunia partnership takes that single picture and puts two sets of permissions to work on it. You keep the mortgage and protection advice, which sits within your own permissions. E&G takes the pensions, investments and estate planning, which sits within its FCA authorisation (No. 474163). You are both working from the same facts about the same client at the same time.
The line between the two stays fixed. You introduce and stay involved. You do not give regulated advice on pensions, investments or estate planning. E&G does, and carries the suitability duty and the documentation that come with it.
For the client, joined-up advice changes the following:
— the facts move across with them, with their consent.
— the missing pension, the under-sized protection, the growing inheritance-tax exposure.
— the mortgage term set with retirement in view, the protection sized against the actual liabilities.
— through a warm handover to E&G.
— given by a qualified planner at an established FCA-authorised firm, with the recommendation set out in a suitability report.
For you, it changes the following:
— you become the person who opened the door to advice the client needed.
— an advice-led conversation that does not depend on the rate cycle.
— a stake in the ongoing assets under management, in place of a one-off fee.
— E&G holds the FCA authorisation, the suitability obligation and the compliance work.
— the relationship stays yours, and so does the mortgage business.
A couple in their early forties are remortgaging their home. Both have small pensions frozen with former employers. One of them has recently gone self-employed and has no income protection. Their home has risen in value and their estate is starting to grow. Without joined-up advice, you arrange the remortgage and nothing else is reviewed.
With joined-up advice, you place the mortgage and the protection you are permitted to advise on, including the income protection the self-employed partner needs. With the couple's consent you introduce them to E&G, which advises on the frozen pensions, the longer-term plan and the early signs of an estate to manage. You both stay in view, and the couple deals with one team that already knows their situation.
A warm introduction passes the client's context to the adviser along with their name and contact details, so the adviser starts with what you already know.
With consent, E&G picks up the facts you already hold, so the client is not asked to re-explain their life. You are kept informed through the partner portal, and you can see where each introduction has reached without chasing anyone. The client deals with one team working from the same information.
You introduce and support. You do not advise on pensions, investments or estate planning. E&G holds the FCA authorisation and takes full responsibility for the regulated advice, its suitability and its documentation.
That protects the client, who receives regulated advice from an authorised firm with the obligations that brings. It protects you, because the regulatory weight sits with E&G and your client relationship stays with you. The recommendations follow the client's needs.
You run your firm day to day as before. You keep placing mortgage business through E&G on comparable terms, or you stay with your own network. Your systems, your processes and your choices about lenders remain yours.
A client's wealth questions now go to E&G, and you share in the value that answering them creates.
Because you and E&G see the client whole, more gets spotted at each life stage: the growing estate, the maturing pension, the change in family circumstances that should prompt a review. Each of those is another point where the client is served and another point where value is built.
Over the years, that recurring share of assets under management becomes the part of your firm a buyer can value. A mortgage-only business has little recurring income for a buyer to value, and a recurring book of advice relationships gives a firm capital value. This describes how recurring income is valued. It does not forecast any firm's results.
No. You introduce and stay at the centre. The relationship remains yours and you keep placing the mortgage business. E&G advises on the regulated wealth side and reports the progress of every introduction back to you through the partner portal.
You gather the ordinary facts you already collect for a mortgage, and with the client's consent you make a warm introduction. Sharing facts and introducing a client is not regulated advice. E&G then gives the regulated advice on pensions, investments and estate planning.
Then there may be nothing to introduce. Where a client has no adviser, or an old arrangement left unreviewed, a warm introduction to E&G gives them regulated advice built on the picture you already hold.
No. You keep your systems, your network options and your day-to-day process. The change is that a client's wealth questions now have a clear home with E&G, and you share in the value created.
How buyers value a mortgage business, why recurring income raises that value, and how a partnership with Equity & General builds recurring income into your firm.
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Why mortgage income rises and falls with the rate cycle, and why a second, recurring advice income built alongside it grows more the earlier it starts.
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The pension, tax and estate questions portfolio buy-to-let landlords face, the signs you see in their mortgage cases, and how the introduction to E&G works.
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.