Completion day: the protection and wills referral in the conveyancing file

On completion day your client becomes a homeowner and, in the same breath, takes on a mortgage that may run for decades. It is almost always the largest financial commitment they will ever make. Yet at that exact moment most buyers have no life cover tied to the debt, no income protection if they cannot work, and frequently no valid will reflecting their new circumstances.

You see this pattern on file after file. The client is focused on keys and boxes, not on what happens to the mortgage if they die or fall seriously ill. As the solicitor handling the transaction, you are uniquely placed to notice the exposure, precisely because you are the one who documented the debt.

A completion actually surfaces two distinct needs, and it is worth separating them.

• Protection. A new mortgage with no life or income cover leaves a family exposed to losing the home if the earner dies or cannot work. This is a matter for a vetted, regulated advice firm.
• Wills and estate planning. Buying property, especially jointly or as a couple, is a classic trigger for making or updating a will and considering how the property is held. This is a matter for vetted will and estate specialists.

Bundling them as a single vague suggestion helps no one. Treating them as two clear, separate introductions gives the client a route to the right specialist for each.

Nobody else in the client's life is looking at the whole transaction the way you are. The lender sees a mortgage application. The estate agent sees a sale. You see the legal reality of the ownership, the debt, and the client's circumstances. That vantage point is exactly why the referral belongs in the conveyancing file.

Flagging it is not advice. You are not telling the client which policy to buy or how to draft their will. You are pointing out that taking on a large mortgage is a recognised moment to review protection and wills, and offering to introduce them to specialists who can help. The choice remains entirely theirs.

Completion is busy, which is exactly why the referral needs to be systematised rather than left to memory. Build it into the standard closing steps.

• Add a protection-and-wills referral checkpoint to your completion checklist.
• Raise it in the completion or post-completion letter, framed as a general prompt, not a recommendation.
• Obtain the client's consent to be introduced, and record their decision either way.

Done consistently, it takes moments and reaches every buyer, not just the ones a fee-earner happens to remember on a quiet afternoon.

Because this is a residential and general matter, not a personal-injury one, a properly disclosed referral arrangement is entirely permissible. The referral-fee ban under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act is specific to personal-injury claims; it does not touch a conveyancing protection or wills introduction. What the SRA does require is transparency, so the client must know the arrangement exists and that it does not affect your independence.

Referring through a network means the destination firms are vetted and regulated, the introduction is tracked and disclosable, and a compliant referral can return a share of the fee to your firm, typically a 60-70% member share. Your client leaves the transaction properly protected. Your file records a clean, consented introduction. And a moment that used to pass unremarked becomes value for everyone involved.