Life, critical illness and income protection sit within your own permissions and follow straight from the mortgage. What to advise on yourself, where that stops, and how the wider planning becomes an E&G introduction.
Protection is the one piece of a client's wider financial life a mortgage broker is already allowed to advise on. Life cover, critical illness cover and income protection sit inside the permissions your firm already holds. They follow from a mortgage, and you can advise on them yourself.
Protection can get rushed at the end of a case, or left for later.
Pensions, investments and estate planning are regulated activities you are not permitted to advise on. Protection is different. Advising a client on life cover, critical illness cover and income protection sits within the permissions a mortgage firm already holds. You can do it without extra permissions and without E&G.
That makes protection the first step into a wider financial conversation. It is regulated advice that protects the client's home and income, and it is yours to give. It also leads to the planning that is not yours to give.
The time is completion. A client has just taken on the largest debt of their life, often with a partner and children depending on the home that debt bought. The mortgage was arranged on the assumption that both incomes keep coming in and both people stay well. Protection is the conversation about what happens if one of those assumptions fails.
A couple in their thirties are completing on a family home with two young children. The mortgage is affordable while both work. If one of them dies or cannot work, the home is at risk. You are the adviser in the room at that point, and the protection advice is yours to give.
Life cover is the starting point. If the borrower dies, it clears or reduces the mortgage and leaves the family in the home. You advise on the shape of it: decreasing term to track a repayment mortgage, level term where the balance stays the same, family income benefit where a regular replacement income suits the household better than a lump sum.
This is standard protection advice and it is yours. Sizing the cover to the debt and the family, choosing the term to match the mortgage, and arranging the policy are all within your permissions.
Critical illness cover pays out if the client is diagnosed with a serious condition and survives it. Clients may decline it on price. Advising on it means explaining what it does and does not cover, and about the trade-off between cost and the breadth of the definitions.
The client may be adding up premiums by the time you reach it. Put the risk in front of the client before price ends the conversation.
Income protection replaces part of the client's income if illness or injury stops them working. For a working household it protects the income the mortgage depends on.
It takes more work to advise on, and the client may be tired by the time you reach it. It still sits within your permissions, and recommending it is your job. A client with a large mortgage and no income protection has a gap you can close.
Protection tends to arrive at the end of a long case, when the mortgage is agreed, the client is relieved and everyone wants to be finished. Cover may then be quoted quickly or thinly, or deferred to a follow-up that does not happen.
A family without the right cover finds out when they need to claim. Rushing protection also costs you, because it is yours to write and it leads to the wider planning the partnership is built around.
Arranging the cover is yours. The wider structuring around it can move into regulated advice that is not.
Two examples show the line:
You advise on the protection. When the conversation turns to how it fits a pension, an investment or an estate, that is regulated advice, and it is ours.
To advise on protection you ask about the client's income, their savings, their dependants and their plans. The answers show what else is missing.
You may find an old pension nobody is reviewing, savings in cash with no plan, no will, or no plan for paying off the mortgage in retirement. Ask whether anyone has looked at any of it.
Once protection is arranged and you have seen the wider gaps, the next step is an introduction. You can tell the client they have an old pension worth reviewing, or savings with no plan, or no protection for their estate. Naming the need is allowed. Recommending what to do about it is not.
You then introduce them to E&G. With their consent, you pass over their details and the nature of the need through the partner portal or a direct hand-off. E&G gives the regulated advice, implements it and takes responsibility for it. You stay their mortgage and protection broker, and you share in the value of what follows.
Treat protection as a full part of every case. Give it the time it needs, advise on all three covers, and size them to the client's needs.
When protection is handled well, the wider gaps are already known and the client trusts your judgement before you offer an introduction to E&G.
No. Life cover, critical illness cover and income protection sit within the permissions your mortgage firm already holds. You advise on and arrange them yourself, without E&G and without varying your permissions.
Arranging the cover is yours. Advising on the trust that holds it and the inheritance tax position around it is regulated estate-planning work that sits with E&G. You arrange the protection and introduce the client for the planning that surrounds it.
No. Protection stays with you in both the introducer and partner models. The introduction covers the pensions, investments and estate planning you are not permitted to advise on. The mortgage and the protection remain yours.
Yes. Advising on and arranging income protection sits within a mortgage firm's permissions in the same way as life and critical illness cover.
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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.