Consumer Duty and estate planning referrals: the adviser's guide

Estate planning sits outside the regulatory perimeter, which is precisely why it catches advice firms out: the instinct is that unregulated means out of scope. Consumer Duty says otherwise. This guide sets out the obligation, the process that discharges it, and the evidence a firm should be able to show. (Our full compliance briefing, written for advisers and compliance teams, expands on each point - available on request.)

The obligation

Under PRIN 2A.2.8R, firms must take proactive steps to avoid foreseeable harm to retail customers. A client with no Will, a Will unreviewed for a decade, or no LPA has an identifiable, foreseeable harm sitting in their file. The Duty does not require advisers to become estate planners; it requires the gap to be spotted and acted on.

The chain

When you refer a client on, you form a short distribution chain - and because Will-writing is unregulated, the comfort regulated firms take from each other does not extend to it. The quality of your referral partner is an assessable element of your own conduct: qualification you can point to, a documented process, and a basis for the choice that is written down.

The process

Three questions, at onboarding and every annual review: Does the client have a Will? Has it been reviewed in the last five years, or since a major life event? Do they have an LPA? Ask, record the answers, refer the gaps to a partner whose suitability you can evidence, and log what happened. A life-events trigger checklist at review completes the picture.

The evidence

What protects the firm is the contemporaneous record: questions asked, answers logged, referrals made or declined, and the documented basis for the partner. The FCA's bereavement review is a reminder of how these gaps surface - the post-death file audit reveals what did or did not happen at fact-find, years earlier, and the FOS three-year-from-knowledge rule keeps old omissions in scope.

Key takeaways

• An unaddressed estate planning gap is foreseeable harm - inside the Duty
• The referral partner's suitability is part of your own conduct
• Three questions, asked and recorded, are the process control that discharges the obligation

The Kinherit Academy turns this framework into practice across eight complimentary, CPD-credited sessions: kinherit.co.uk/academy. For the full compliance briefing, email partners@kinherit.co.uk.