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

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, and it is worth unpacking.

The upstream gap the review will reveal

The FCA will examine the bereavement journey from the moment a firm is notified of a death through to settlement or transfer of investments. 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 are all outcomes that 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 - IFA firms are required to take proactive steps to avoid foreseeable harm. An adviser who identifies an estate planning gap and does nothing about it, or who refers a client to an unqualified provider, is exposed under this rule. The CMA's January 2026 guidance on unregulated Will-writing reinforced this: the quality of a referral partner is now an assessable element of a firm's own conduct.

The FCA's bereavement review adds a further layer. Firms that cannot demonstrate a consistent process for identifying and addressing estate planning needs - at onboarding and at annual review - will find that their bereavement data tells the story for them.

Two further developments compound this. In January 2026, the CMA updated its guidance on unregulated legal services - including Will-writing - setting a published standard for what competent, transparent practice looks like, and backed by direct enforcement powers under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. An IFA referring a client to a Will-writer who falls short of that standard is now exposed under Consumer Duty’s distribution chain obligation: the choice of partner is itself an assessable element of the 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 – including unmet needs identified but not acted on. Estate planning gaps surfacing in a client file but not followed through are exactly the kind of omission the IAAT framework is designed to capture. Taken together, the direction of travel is clear: the bar for what advisers must identify, record and refer has risen materially, and 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 qualified, STEP-accredited 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.

A note on 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