You do not need a campaign to start the financial planning conversation with a client. You need five minutes and a set of eyes that already know how to read a balance sheet. Every year, the same handful of signals pass across your desk — in the accounts, the tax computation, the director's loan account, the conversation about next year's budget. Most go unremarked because they are not, strictly, an accounting matter. But they are exactly the moments a regulated financial planner would want to know about.
Here are the six worth a second look.
1. A strong year, again
Retained profit has grown for the second or third year running and extraction has not kept pace. This is the clearest of all the signals: money is building inside the company with no plan attached to it. The client has not made a decision to accumulate cash — they have simply not made a decision.
2. Cash sitting well above what the business needs
Distinct from point one: a balance sheet showing six or seven figures of cash against a working-capital requirement a fraction of that size. Some of it is prudent buffer. The rest is capital doing nothing, and every year it sits there is a year of planning options not taken — pension contributions, investment, extraction structured for tax efficiency.
3. A director crossing a threshold
A 54th or 55th birthday changes what is possible with a pension. A director beginning to talk about "winding down" in the next five to ten years, even vaguely, is describing a retirement income problem nobody has scoped yet. You will often hear this before anyone else does, because it comes up in the year-end meeting, not a diary note.
4. Protection that does not match the risk on the balance sheet
A shareholder loan, a personal guarantee on a commercial mortgage, a business that depends on one working director — and no key person or shareholder protection in place. You can see the exposure in the accounts. The client usually cannot, because it was never their job to look for it.
5. Growth that is about to outrun the plan
New premises, a first significant hire, inventory finance, an equipment loan. Growth changes the risk profile of the business and the owner's personal position at the same time, and it is precisely when protection and structure get reviewed least, because everyone is focused on the growth itself.
6. The first sign of an exit
An unsolicited approach from a buyer, a family member being groomed for succession, a shareholder wanting to be bought out. However informal, this is the earliest point at which personal financial planning and the eventual deal need to run on the same clock. Left until heads of terms are signed, most of the useful planning window has already gone.
You already have the information. The only thing missing is the sentence that turns it into a conversation.
What noticing actually sounds like
None of this requires a sales pitch. It requires one honest observation, delivered in the meeting you were already having:
- On profit or cash: "Retained profit's grown again this year — has anyone looked at what that surplus should be doing long-term?"
- On age: "You mentioned winding down eventually — has anyone modelled what that actually looks like for you personally?"
- On protection: "I noticed there's a personal guarantee on the new lease — is there any cover in place against that?"
- On exit signals: "If someone did make an approach, is there a plan for what happens to the money afterwards, not just the sale itself?"
Each of those is a question you are qualified to ask, because it comes directly from something you can see. None of them is regulated advice, and none of them commits the client to anything beyond a conversation.
What happens after you notice
This is where the accountant's job ends and the partnership does the rest. You flag the moment; an Altro partnership manager takes the introduction and handles the regulated conversation from there, working from the same facts you already hold. No advice is given by the accountancy firm, no FCA burden lands on it, and the relationship — and the fee, where applicable — stays attached to your firm throughout.
The six signals above are not rare. Most firms see two or three of them in almost every client file, every single year. The only variable is whether anyone says something.