Most accountants who hold back from introducing a client to a financial planner are not holding back on principle. They are holding back because the next fortnight is invisible to them. You know what you would say. What you do not know is who contacts your client, what they are told, what gets asked of you, and whether anything ever comes back. Uncertainty like that is quite reasonably resolved by saying nothing and moving on to the next agenda item.
So this article describes nothing but the mechanics. Six steps, from the sentence in your year-end meeting to the note that lands back on your desk six weeks later — and, at each step, exactly which firm is doing the work.
Step 1 — You notice, and you say one sentence
Every introduction starts with something you can already see: profit that has grown for a third year with no extraction plan attached, cash well above what the business needs, a director whose 55th birthday is in the diary, a personal guarantee on a new lease with no cover behind it. We set those out in full in the six signals already sitting in your client file.
The sentence itself is an observation and an offer, not advice: “Retained profit’s grown again this year — would it be useful to have someone look at what that surplus should actually be doing? I work with a firm who do exactly this.” You have not recommended a product, a provider or a course of action. You have offered to open a door. The boundary is set out plainly in who does what.
Step 2 — Nothing moves until the client says yes
Consent comes before any detail is shared, and it is recorded: the date, what the client agreed could be passed on, how they want to be contacted, and whether they would like you present. This is partly a data-protection requirement and partly the thing that keeps the introduction feeling like your firm’s service rather than the sale of a lead. A client who has said yes in your office is expecting the call; a client whose details simply appeared somewhere is not, and the difference shows up in the first thirty seconds of the conversation.
Step 3 — The handover, and what stays with you
The introduction that gets passed across is short: name, contact details, the trigger you spotted in a line or two, and any practical notes. What does not travel as a matter of routine is the file itself — the accounts, the tax computation, the personal tax data. The planner asks the client directly for what they need, and if the quickest route is for you to supply a figure, the client authorises that. Your confidentiality obligations stay exactly where they were.
Step 4 — The first conversation
Contact is normally made within a week. The first meeting is a fact-find, not a pitch: what the client owns, what they owe, who depends on them, what they want the business to have paid for by the time they stop. No fee is charged for it and no product is discussed, because at that stage nobody yet knows enough for a product to be relevant. You are welcome in the room, and most partner firms sit in on their first two or three before deciding they no longer need to.
An introduction is not a handover of the relationship. It is the handover of one conversation — and it comes back to you.
Step 5 — Advice, delivered and documented by the regulated firm
Everything from this point is Equity & General’s responsibility: the research, the recommendation, the suitability documentation, the implementation and the ongoing service that follows. That is the whole architecture of the arrangement — the regulatory weight sits with the firm that holds the permissions (FCA No. 474163), not with the accountancy practice that spotted the opportunity. Where the advice touches something you handle — the timing or accounting treatment of an employer pension contribution, say — you will be asked to confirm the position rather than left to discover it at the next year-end.
Step 6 — What comes back to your desk
The most common complaint about referral arrangements is the silence afterwards. Under an Altro partnership the loop is closed deliberately: you are told when contact was made, when the client met the planner, and — with the client’s agreement — what was put in place. That matters commercially, because it is the evidence that your recommendation was a good one. It matters practically too, because several of the things a planner implements are things you will need to know about when you next prepare the accounts.
An illustrative timeline
The sequence below is a composite, built to show the shape of the process. It is illustrative — not a real client, and not a promise about any particular outcome.
- Mid-October, year-end meeting. An engineering company turning over around £2.4m. Cash at bank £310,000 against an agreed working-capital requirement of roughly £90,000. Two directors, aged 56 and 52. No employer pension contributions in three years.
- Same meeting. The partner says one sentence about the surplus. Both directors say yes, they had been meaning to sort it out.
- Day 2. Consent recorded; a three-line introduction passed to the partnership manager.
- Day 5. The planner calls the senior director and books a fact-find for the following week.
- Week 2. Fact-find meeting. The partner joins for the first twenty minutes, then leaves.
- Weeks 3–5. Equity & General prepares and presents its advice. The practice is asked one factual question about how contributions have been posted historically.
- Week 6. A summary of what was implemented reaches the practice, who note it for the next set of accounts.
Total time inside the accountancy firm: one sentence, one consent note, twenty minutes in a meeting, one email. Under two hours spread across six weeks — against a client relationship that now has a second professional attached to it and a reason to stay.
Why the mechanics are the whole argument
The advice gap is not caused by business owners refusing help. The lang cat’s State of Advice Report 2025 found that just 9% of UK adults had paid for financial advice in the preceding two years — while 91% of those who did take advice found it valuable. That gap between how few people get advice and how many value it is not a demand problem. It is an introduction problem, and it is closed one sentence at a time by the professional the client already trusts.
If you want the process in more detail before you use it, how it works sets out the partnership end to end, and the free partner guide covers the agreement, the client communications and the commercial model.
Common questions
Do we need FCA authorisation to introduce a client?
No. Your firm’s role stops at the introduction: you flag what you have seen and, with the client’s permission, pass their details on. You do not advise on, arrange or recommend a regulated product, and you do not take a view on whether a particular course of action is suitable for that client. Every regulated activity — the fact-find, the analysis, the recommendation, the paperwork and the ongoing responsibility for all of it — sits with Equity & General Financial Services, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (No. 474163). The arrangement is documented in an Introducer Agreement, so the boundary is written down rather than assumed. That document is also the straightforward answer to give your professional indemnity insurer if they ask what you are doing.
How much of our time does one introduction take?
Less than most partners expect. The introduction itself is one sentence in a meeting you were already having. After that, expect a short note recording the client’s consent, an optional twenty minutes if you choose to sit in on the first conversation, and occasionally a factual query — a figure from the accounts, or confirmation of how something has been treated in the books. Across a typical six-week sequence that is well under two hours, and much of it is work you would have ended up doing anyway when the client came back to you with half-formed questions. The research, the suitability report and the implementation are not yours to do.
What client information do we actually send?
Only what the client has agreed to, and usually far less than firms expect. A workable introduction contains the client’s name, their preferred contact details, the trigger you noticed in a sentence or two, and any practical notes — that they would like you in the first meeting, or would rather not be called before six. Full accounts, tax computations and personal tax data are not passed across as a matter of routine. If the planner needs figures, they ask the client, and the client decides whether to authorise you to supply them. That keeps your duty of confidentiality intact and leaves the client in control of their own information.
Can we sit in on the meetings with our client?
Yes, and many partners do at first. Attending the opening conversation is the quickest way to see how the fact-find is run, what gets asked, and how the advice is framed — and it reassures a client who is meeting someone new on your recommendation. Most firms attend the first two or three introductions and then stop, not because they are shut out but because they no longer feel the need. Where you do not attend, you can still be copied into the client-facing summary if the client agrees. The one thing to avoid is answering the regulated questions yourself, however tempting it is when you know the client best.
What if the client says no, or already has an adviser?
Then nothing needs managing. A client who declines has still had a useful moment: someone they trust pointed at an unattended part of their finances, and that tends to resurface at the next year-end without you raising it again. A client who already has an adviser should stay with them — an introduction is not a competitive pitch, and pushing one would damage the trust that makes your recommendation worth anything in the first place. The only question worth asking there is when they last had a proper review, because dormant advice relationships are common. Either way the client has committed to nothing, and no data has moved without their consent.