The FCA's bereavement review: what it means for IFA firms and their estate planning process

The FCA announced on 12th May 2026 that it is reviewing how consumer investment firms handle bereaved customers - covering platforms, advisers and wealth managers. Firms will be contacted from May 2026; findings will be published later this year.

On the surface, this looks like a review about process: how firms communicate with bereaved families, how quickly they transfer assets, how they identify and support vulnerable customers. It is all of those things. But there is a less obvious dimension that matters specifically for IFA firms.

The upstream gap the review will reveal

The FCA will examine the bereavement journey from notification of a death through to settlement or transfer. In doing so, it will effectively audit the quality of the relationship that existed before the death - including whether the adviser ever asked the client about their Will, their LPA, or their estate planning arrangements.

A client who dies intestate, whose Will has not been reviewed in a decade, or whose estate suffers unnecessary inheritance tax because the business clause was missing - these outcomes trace back to what happened, or did not happen, at fact-find and annual review. The bereavement process is where those absences become visible.

This is not a speculative risk. The FOS three-year-from-knowledge rule has no current longstop. A complaint from a bereaved family brought years after the original failure is still in scope. And the FCA's bereavement review will generate MI across the sector on exactly these outcomes.

What the FCA is looking for

The review follows similar work in retail banking and insurance, where the FCA found inconsistent practices, repeated information requests and avoidable delays. It is part of the FCA's broader Consumer Duty supervisory programme.

Under Consumer Duty - specifically PRIN 2A.2.8R - firms are required to take proactive steps to avoid foreseeable harm. An adviser who identifies an estate planning gap and does nothing, or who refers a client to an unqualified provider, is exposed under this rule. The CMA's guidance on unregulated Will-writing reinforces the point: the quality of a referral partner is an assessable element of a firm's own conduct.

Separately, the FCA's Investment Advice Assessment Tool (IAAT), published in June 2025, reflects rising expectations around evidencing the full client situation at fact-find. Estate planning is not mentioned by name, but the tool directly prompts advisers on retirement and later-life planning - exactly the zone where estate planning gaps surface. A gap identified in a client file but never acted on is precisely the kind of omission the framework captures. The direction of travel is clear, and the bar for what advisers must identify, record and refer continues to rise.

What good looks like

The practical embeds that protect a firm are straightforward:

• Three standard questions covering Wills, recent review, and LPA - asked at onboarding and every annual review
• A Will-review pathway with a STEP-qualified partner
• A life-events trigger checklist at annual review
• Documentation of referrals made, declined, or outstanding
• A documented basis for the choice of referral partner

None of these requires estate planning expertise from the adviser. Each is a process control. Together they give the firm a defensible position under Consumer Duty and a contemporaneous record that will matter if a complaint surfaces years later.

The Kinherit Academy

The Kinherit Academy is a programme of eight CPD-credited sessions built around exactly these process requirements - from the Consumer Duty obligations advisers need to understand, through to the specific planning areas (Business Relief, LPAs, blended families) where gaps are most common. It is available without charge to partner firms.

If the FCA's bereavement review is prompting a review of your estate planning processes, our Consumer Duty compliance briefing sets out the regulatory framework in detail. It is available on request.

Jess Taylor TEP, Associate Director of Estate Planning, and Richard Thomson, Co-founder and Chairman, Kinherit

For a compliance briefing on Consumer Duty - Email us (partners@kinherit.co.uk)