Six moments in your existing cases
Six points in an ordinary mortgage case where a wider financial conversation opens naturally, and how the introduction to Equity & General handles each one.
Six points in an ordinary mortgage case where a wider financial conversation opens naturally, and how the introduction to Equity & General handles each one.
You advise clients on some of the largest financial decisions they make: buying a first home, moving, releasing equity and building a portfolio.
Inside each of those cases sits a second conversation, about pensions, investments and what happens to the family if things go wrong. When the mortgage completes and the file closes, that wider conversation often does not take place. Six moments in a mortgage case give you the chance to raise it, and the introduction to Equity & General works the same way in each.
Each of these moments comes from a case already on your books. The client has already told you about their income, their outgoings, their plans and their worries about money before any question about pensions or savings is raised. The six below are the points where one question opens the second conversation.
A couple completes on a house at four or five times their joint income. They have taken on the largest debt they will ever carry, and often there are children in the picture. From the case in front of you, you can see whether any life cover, income protection or critical illness cover sits behind that borrowing, and frequently none does.
Protection is yours to advise on under your own permissions, so the first part of this moment is giving the protection advice in full. Beyond the policy sits a wider question: if one income stopped, would the family keep the house, and is anything in place beyond the mortgage. You advise on the protection, and we advise on the wider financial planning around it.
At a remortgage you collect the client's income, outgoings, debts and plans. In doing so you often see things that have nothing to do with the mortgage: a pension left with a former employer and never looked at, savings sitting in cash earning almost nothing, a business owner paying themselves in a way that ignores their retirement entirely.
Ask whether anyone is looking at the client's pension and savings while you review the mortgage. If the answer is no, the introduction passes them to an E&G adviser, who reviews the pension, the savings and the longer-term plan. You keep the mortgage relationship and stay in view while the wider review happens.
Over the following decades a first-time buyer may marry, have children, change jobs, inherit, start a business and retire, and each of those events carries a financial decision. You may be the first regulated professional they have dealt with.
There is often no urgent gap on day one. The client will need advice for many years and may have no adviser. Introducing them to E&G early means the broker who helped them buy their first home also connected them to advice for the decisions that follow. The value of the introduction builds over the life of the relationship.
A landlord completing on a fourth or fifth buy-to-let, often held personally, is running a property business. The questions around that business are financial-planning questions: whether the properties should sit in a company, what the rental income means for their pension contributions, what capital gains and inheritance tax will do when they sell or die, and who inherits a portfolio that may be worth more than everything else they own.
You see the portfolio grow case by case. Those tax and estate questions are not yours to answer, and the client may not have asked anyone about them. The introduction puts them in front of an E&G adviser who can plan for them. You continue to place the lending, and we handle the pension, tax and estate side that the lending exposes.
A product transfer is often a five-minute job with little income attached. It also gives you a scheduled reason to speak to a client who is not under the pressure of a purchase, which makes it a better time for a wider conversation than the middle of a house move.
Ask whether anyone has reviewed the client's pension and savings, and offer an introduction if nobody has. For a firm with a large back-book of product transfers, this moment comes round more often than any other.
An older client releasing equity, or taking later-life lending, is making a decision that reaches straight into their estate. Freeing money from a home changes what beneficiaries will inherit, interacts with inheritance tax, and often surfaces the fact that there is no will, no lasting power of attorney and no plan for care costs. You arrange the lending, and advice on its estate consequences sits outside your permissions.
In later-life cases you will meet clients releasing equity who have no will and no lasting power of attorney. The introduction connects them to an E&G adviser who can address the estate planning, the tax and the protection of what remains. The client then makes the lending decision with the estate planning in view.
The introduction works the same way in each of these moments.
Each of these moments depends on the line between introducing and advising. You can advise on mortgages and protection under your own permissions. You must not advise on pensions, investments or estate planning; that is regulated advice, and it is ours to give. Raising a question, spotting a need and making an introduction all sit safely on your side of that line. Recommending a pension transfer, an investment or an estate-planning structure sits on our side.
In each moment you spot the need in the mortgage case, raise it with a question and make the introduction. We provide the advice, and you remain part of the client's relationship and share in the value of the business that results.
No. Every moment above already happens inside your normal workflow. The only change is raising one extra question, and making an introduction when the client wants one.
Yes. Advising on protection sits within your own permissions, and at completion it is yours to handle. The introduction to E&G is for the wider planning that protection sits alongside, covering pensions, investments and estate planning, which is regulated advice we provide.
Then no introduction is made, and you carry on with the mortgage as before. A first-time buyer with no urgent gap may not need an adviser for years. Raising it early means the relationship is in place when they do.
No. Your job is to spot the moment and make the introduction. Whether and how advice can help is a judgement for the E&G adviser, made under their regulated responsibility.
How the work divides between you and E&G: what stays with you, what passes to us, and the regulatory line between introducing and advising.
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How a one-off referral fee compares with a share in the ongoing value of the advice, for your income and for what your firm is worth.
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Each step of an introduction to Equity & General, from the sentence in the mortgage meeting to the update you receive, and which firm carries each step.
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.