Referring the business owner who's about to retire

For most business owners, exit is the largest financial event of their lives, and it arrives with a cluster of decisions that dwarf anything on a normal return. What to do with sale proceeds, how to structure the transaction, how retirement income will actually be drawn, how to plan for an estate that is about to change shape entirely, and how to protect a spouse who has relied on the business for decades. You are usually the first professional the owner confides in, often years before the deal.

That early confidence is exactly why the referral matters. As a SmartPeer member you are the introducer. You are not advising on how to invest the proceeds or draw a retirement income; you are the person best placed to see the event coming and to bring in a vetted, regulated advice firm while there is still time to plan.

The single biggest mistake in owner exits is leaving the wider planning until the money has already landed. Once the proceeds are in the bank, options narrow and reliefs can be lost. The referral signals to watch for are almost always spoken aloud months or years ahead:

• An owner mentioning a target retirement age, or a buyer sniffing around.
• Talk of handing the business to children or a management team.
• A pension that has been neglected because the business was always the plan.
• A spouse whose financial security is entirely bound up in the company.
• An estate that a large lump sum is about to enlarge substantially.

Each is a cue to introduce a specialist while choices remain open.

You will be closely involved in the tax and structuring side of an exit, and the owner will naturally ask you what they should do with the money afterwards. That question, about how to invest, how to draw an income, how to secure a retirement, is regulated advice. It is not yours to answer, however well you know the client.

A clean handover keeps everyone safe. You retain the accountancy and transaction work, which is substantial and clearly yours, and you route the retirement and investment questions to a firm authorised to handle them. The owner gets a properly planned exit rather than a good sale followed by an afterthought, and you are remembered as the professional who saw the whole thing through.

Through SmartPeer the introduction is light-touch and sits comfortably beside your own work. You identify the owner and the timeline, introduce them to a vetted, regulated advice firm, and continue with the tax and structuring side while the specialist handles the retirement and investment planning. You are not running that side of the advice or signing off recommendations.

SmartPeer is commission-only, so introductions cost you nothing, and members typically receive a 60-70% share of the fee when an introduction leads to business. On an event of this scale, the value of getting the introduction right, and early, is considerable, and it complements the fee you earn on the exit work itself.

The best time to mention it is before the owner thinks they are ready. When they first float the idea of stepping back in a few years, that is the cue. You might say that the sale itself is only half the job, that what happens to the proceeds and the retirement they fund is the other half, and that you know a regulated firm who plans exactly this, ideally well ahead of any deal.

That framing keeps you squarely as the introducer. You have not advised on investments or income; you have flagged that a life-changing event needs specialist planning and connected your client to the right people. Business owners who exit well tell other owners who did it, and being the accountant who set that up is a powerful source of new work.

Look first at the owners in their late fifties and sixties whose exit is visible on the horizon. An early, well-judged introduction there does more for the client, and for your practice, than any late scramble once the money has moved.