Who advises your client
Who the E&G advisers are, what their advice covers, and how your client is looked after from the first call onwards.
Who the E&G advisers are, what their advice covers, and how your client is looked after from the first call onwards.
When you introduce a client, their trust in you passes to the adviser, and poor advice would reflect on you. Before introducing anyone, you need to know who will advise them.
Equity & General Financial Services Ltd is an established independent financial planning firm, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (No. 474163), working from offices at 2 Charterhouse Mews in London. It has its own client base and has advised clients for many years.
The advisers, the systems, the compliance function and the administration are all in-house. That matters for your client because it means one firm is accountable for the whole of the advice, from the first conversation to the annual review years later.
The adviser starts from the client’s situation: their income, commitments, plans and what they want the money to do. The recommendation follows from that, and it is set out in a written suitability report explaining why it fits the client.
Before you introduce anyone, it is reasonable to ask Equity & General what range of providers and products its advisers can recommend from, and how its advisers are paid. Those answers tell you how the advice is shaped, and Equity & General will give them.
The people E&G puts in front of your client are qualified financial planners who advise for a living. They are used to explaining things clearly to people who do not work in finance.
How the adviser explains things reflects on you as well. A client who is talked down to or confused by jargon comes away unhappy however good the recommendation was.
The first meeting is a fact-find, free of charge. The adviser asks what the client owns, what they owe, who depends on them, and what they want their money to have done by the time they stop working. Products are not discussed at that stage.
Because the first call is a fact-find, the client can agree to it easily, and you know your client will not be sold anything on that call. Advice follows once the adviser understands the situation in full.
After the fact-find, the adviser researches the options, decides what suits the client, and sets it out in a written suitability report that explains what is recommended and why. The client reads the reasoning before anything is put in place, and can ask questions or decline.
This is the regulated core of what E&G does, and the responsibility for it sits with them. The research, the recommendation, the report and the implementation are E&G’s obligations under its FCA authorisation. That framework protects your client, and your standing for having made the introduction.
Circumstances, markets and tax rules change after the first advice. E&G provides an ongoing service: regular reviews, adjustments as things change, and someone the client can call when they need to.
The client’s advice is kept up to date, and the relationship you introduced continues over years, which is where the lasting value of an introduction comes from.
The client goes to E&G because they trust you. Good advice strengthens that trust, and the client sees you as the person who helped with more than the mortgage. Poor advice would damage your reputation as well as the adviser’s.
For some clients you introduce, this will be their first experience of financial advice, and the impression it leaves attaches to you. E&G carries the regulatory responsibility, and good advice benefits your reputation.
You advise on the mortgage and the protection that goes with it, under your own permissions. You do not advise on pensions, investments or estate planning. That regulated advice is E&G’s, under its FCA authorisation (No. 474163).
This puts each part of the client’s life with the firm qualified to handle it. The client gets specialist mortgage advice from you and independent wealth advice from E&G. Each firm works within what it is authorised to do.
You keep the mortgage relationship and visibility of the advice. The partner portal shows you every introduction, its progress and, with the client’s agreement, what was put in place.
You are also welcome in the room, and you can sit in on your first few introductions to see how the advisers work with a client. You remain the client’s broker, with a second professional relationship alongside yours that came through you.
E&G is an established firm, authorised and regulated by the FCA (No. 474163), giving advice through qualified planners, with its compliance and administration in-house. Every recommendation is set out in a written suitability report the client sees before anything is put in place. You are also welcome to sit in on early introductions to see how the advisers work before you rely on it.
Ask what range of providers and products the advisers can recommend from, how the advisers are paid, and what the client receives in writing. Equity & General will answer each of these directly. Ask them before the first introduction.
No. You keep the mortgage relationship and you keep visibility through the partner portal, which shows each introduction and its progress. E&G advises on the regulated wealth side and looks after the ongoing service. You remain the client’s broker, with a second professional relationship alongside yours that came through you.
The first conversation establishes that, and E&G does not charge for it. If the client is already well advised, they should stay where they are. The fact-find either finds a need or confirms there is none.
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