The conveyancer's completion-day checklist: wills, cover and the client you just created

By the time you send the completion call, your client's position has changed in ways they have barely registered. They may now hold their largest-ever asset and their largest-ever debt. They may co-own with someone for the first time. Their old will — if they have one at all — may now misdescribe their estate entirely. Their family's exposure to death or illness has been transformed, and nobody in the transaction was responsible for pointing that out.

Good conveyancers already do more than move money and register title. The checklist below simply makes explicit what the best files quietly consider anyway — and it takes about five minutes per matter. None of it requires you to give advice; every item is a flag, not a recommendation, and each one hands off cleanly to a regulated specialist.

Run these questions against every completing file, purchase or sale.

• Is there a will, and does it still make sense? New property, new co-owner, new mortgage: any one of these can leave an old will misfiring. No will at all means intestacy rules decide who gets the house.
• Tenants in common without a will? You severed the joint tenancy or drafted the transfer that way — but a tenants-in-common share passing under intestacy defeats the point. Flag it.
• Unmarried joint owners? Cohabitants have no automatic inheritance rights. This is the single highest-stakes flag on the list.
• Does any life cover match the new mortgage? A new or larger loan with old or absent cover is the textbook protection gap.
• New dependants at the address? Children moving into the property change what a will and cover need to do.
• Trust or estate planning questions raised during the matter? If the client asked about trusts, gifting or care fees, they told you they need a specialist.
• Sale proceeds landing with no plan? See below — sellers are the forgotten half of the checklist.

Purchase files get whatever attention this subject receives; sale files get none. Yet a downsizing couple completing with several hundred thousand pounds arriving in their current account is one of the most consequential financial moments of their lives. Decisions about that money — how it is held, what it is for, what happens to it on death — benefit enormously from regulated advice, and the weeks after completion are when those decisions get made, well or badly.

A conveyancer who says nothing has done nothing wrong. A conveyancer who signposts regulated advice at that moment has done something genuinely valuable — and created the kind of client loyalty that outlasts the transaction.

The reason checklists like this die in practice is friction. A fee earner spots the flag, means to mention it, and the file closes. Fixing that requires the referral route to be as light as the flag itself.

Through SmartPeer, the workflow is: spot the flag, raise the referral online, done. The client receives an invitation and opts in before any contact takes place — every referral is consent-based, and SmartPeer never approaches your client except through that consented referral. The introduction goes to vetted, regulated advice firms matched to the need, whether that is a will, protection or broader planning. The client disclosure letter your professional rules point towards is generated automatically for every referral, so the compliance record writes itself. Check your own regulator's requirements and disclose to your client — SmartPeer's process handles the paperwork side of that discipline for you.

Every completion creates a client who, for a short window, is unusually receptive to sorting out the things they have postponed for years. Handled well, that window produces a protected family, a valid will, and a client who tells people their conveyancer looked after them properly.

It also produces an income line. SmartPeer members keep 60–70% of introducer fees on completed referrals, tracked live from introduction to completion and paid against commission statements that reconcile. Membership is free with no monthly fees, so a firm can adopt the checklist, wire it to a referral route, and lose nothing if a given month produces no referrals at all.

You already do the hard part — the transaction. The checklist just makes sure the five most valuable minutes of the file are not the ones that never happen.