David Carrington, marketing director at Personal Touch Financial Services, said: “Adviser firms active in the legal services area are very limited at the moment to be honest. We have not seen many firms really branching out.
But protection firms have had a lot on their plates with gender neutralisation and are busy with other things.
“There are two parts of adviser business, particularly for the protection firms, which are in two silos; protection policy business and legal services including will writing, trusts and power of attorney. These need to be brought together in one full fact find.”
Personal Touch plans to set up two options for its adviser members. Advisers can either do the “instruction taking” – essentially a legal advice fact find – and outsource the transferral of that into the end product (will, power of attorney), or train to offer the full end-to-end service.
Carrington said most advisers would likely opt for the former and Personal Touch will either employ an in-house legal team or partner with a third party for those advisers wanting to outsource.
Carrington said overall adviser members were increasingly either training individuals in the firm to become resident protection specialists or outsourcing protection business to other specialist firms.
He added it was only a narrow band of advisers who focused solely on investment and did not offer protection advice.
Sesame Bankhall Group launched a legal services proposition for adviser members in 2011; Sesame Bankhall Legal Services gives advisers the tools to manage legal needs with clients.
