Clients approaching retirement: the accountant's referral checklist

Of all the points in a client's financial life, the approach to retirement generates the most advice needs at once. Pensions, income, tax, estate considerations and protection all come to a head in a few short years. For the accountant, a client nearing retirement is therefore not one referral moment but several, arriving close together. The risk is not that you miss the topic entirely; it is that you notice one part and overlook the rest.

A simple checklist guards against that. It is not a set of things for you to advise on, because much of it is regulated advice. It is a list of things to listen for, each of which points towards a regulated firm. Running through it whenever a client is within a few years of stopping work ensures that every relevant need is recognised and routed, rather than half of them slipping past.

The checklist for a client approaching retirement covers the recurring signals:

• Uncertainty about how they will turn their pension into an income.
• Several pension pots that have never been reviewed or brought together.
• No clear plan for how much income they will need or where it will come from.
• An estate that has grown into a possible inheritance-tax exposure.
• Questions about tax on drawing pensions or other retirement income.
• A business owner with an exit or succession still unresolved.

Each item is something you can notice from the work you already do, and each points to a decision that needs regulated advice rather than an accountant's informal view.

Relying on instinct alone means you tend to catch whichever issue happens to come up in conversation and miss the others. A client might mention their pension, so you flag the pension, while the inheritance-tax exposure and the absence of an income plan go unremarked. A checklist forces a moment's completeness. It prompts you to consider the whole cluster of needs that cluster around retirement, not just the one on the surface.

This matters because these needs are connected. How a client draws their pension affects their tax; their tax affects their estate; their estate affects what they can pass on. Spotting the full set, and routing it to a regulated firm that can join it up, serves the client far better than catching one piece in isolation.

The referral moment for a retiring client is broad, so the introduction can be too. You might say: you are getting close to retirement, and there is quite a lot that deserves proper attention now, from turning your pensions into income to the tax and estate side; none of that is something I advise on, but I can introduce you to a firm that handles all of it.

This keeps you as the introducer while capturing the full scope. You are not advising on any single element. You are connecting the client to a vetted, regulated advice firm that can address the whole cluster, with you continuing to handle the accountancy that supports it.

The practical step is to attach the checklist to a trigger you already have: the client's age and stage. When someone reaches the last few years before retirement, run through the list in your own mind during their next review. Note which items apply, and use them to shape a single, well-timed introduction rather than a scattered series of afterthoughts.

Over time this becomes second nature. The approach to retirement stops being a vague sense that the client should probably see someone and becomes a structured moment where you reliably spot every need and route it correctly.

Through SmartPeer, introducing a retiring client is a commission-only arrangement that fits around your review work. You make the introduction to a regulated advice firm; that firm provides the regulated advice across the retirement picture; you receive a share of the fee, typically a 60-70% member share, without advising yourself.

The discipline to build is to treat the approach to retirement as the richest referral moment you will encounter, and to meet it with a checklist rather than instinct. Clients rarely arrive at all these needs on their own, and they rarely see how the pieces connect. By spotting the full set and routing it to a regulated firm, you serve them at the most important financial juncture of their lives and earn from every introduction.