Where the wealth conversation fits between deals
How to use product transfers, rate holds and the years between deals to offer an introduction to E&G, without giving regulated advice.
How to use product transfers, rate holds and the years between deals to offer an introduction to E&G, without giving regulated advice.
You are busy at application and completion, busy again when a deal matures and a client needs a new one, and quieter in the years between. A product transfer with the same lender takes a few minutes, and afterwards there may be no contact for years.
The wealth conversation fits well in those years, because it does not need a mortgage to be moving. You can raise it without giving advice you are not permitted to give.
Contact with a client is usually tied to a transaction. When there is no deal, there is no obvious reason to call. During a product transfer or a rate hold the client is being looked after, but little passes between you, and years can go by without a conversation.
The client's finances keep changing while their mortgage is settled. In those same quiet years they get a pay rise, take a bonus, come into an inheritance, watch a workplace pension build up without understanding it, and let cash gather in a current account because they are not sure what else to do with it. Questions build up, and the client may not know whom to ask.
A remortgage needs the client to be moving. A pension review, an investment plan or a conversation about an inheritance does not. Those needs can arise while the mortgage is settled and there is nothing to transact. In those years a client may have money sitting idle and a question they have not asked, which is when an introduction is useful to them.
When you carry out a product transfer or agree a rate hold, you are in contact anyway. The client is thinking about their finances, if only for the length of that exchange. Add one question while you have their attention: whether anything else in their life has changed.
You are allowed to ask how a client is getting on, to notice that they mention idle cash or a pension they ignore, and to offer to introduce them to a firm that advises on that. What you must not do is tell them what to do about it. Recommending that they move a pension, choose an investment or arrange their estate a certain way is regulated advice, and that belongs with us.
Your part can be a single sentence. Something close to: I do not advise on pensions myself, but I work with a regulated firm that does, and I can introduce you if it would help. That stays within your permissions and passes the client to someone who can take it further.
These come up in an ordinary catch-up:
Each is a reason to offer an introduction.
Once you make the introduction, the work moves to us. We give the regulated advice on the pension, the investment or the estate, take on the paperwork and the responsibility that comes with it, and keep the client informed throughout. You follow the progress in the partner portal, so you can see that your client is being looked after without having to chase for an update. As the client builds assets under management with us, you share in the value created, and that income continues after the mortgage completes.
You can advise on mortgages, and on protection under your own permissions. You must not advise on pensions, investments or estate planning, which are provided under our FCA authorisation. Your role in the lull is to stay in touch, spot the signal and make the introduction. You need no new permissions, and the compliance work for the advice sits with us.
A single question at a product transfer can start an advice relationship that runs for years, with a share of its value for you. It also keeps you in the client's mind between deals, so that when the mortgage does come up for renewal you are already the person they were last in contact with. You add one question to conversations you are already having.
The contact is what matters. A product transfer is one of the few times in a quiet year when a client is thinking about their finances and has your attention. You add a single question about whether anything else has changed, and offer an introduction if it has.
Asking about a client's circumstances and offering to introduce them to E&G is not regulated advice. Telling a client what they should do with a pension, an investment or their estate is. If you find yourself recommending a course of action in those areas, that is the line, and it is the point to hand over to us. Protection is the exception, because you may advise on it under your own permissions.
Then nothing more is needed for now. When the client is ready, whether that is next month or next year, they come back to you and you make the introduction then. Staying in view through the lull makes it more likely they come back to you.
No. The approach is built around contact you already have, chiefly product transfers and rate reviews. You add one question to existing conversations and passing the ones that go somewhere to us. We do the advice and the administration, and the portal keeps you updated without you having to chase.
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.
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How introducing clients to wealth advice helps you keep them between mortgage deals, and the work one client can bring over the years.
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How to work back through the clients you placed years ago, what to look for in their files, and how each introduction to Equity & General runs.
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.