FR: Are advisers able to offer clients a full legal service or are they confined to just conveyancing and, for example, wills?
The first referral we received from an adviser was a litigation case and since then advisers have continued to refer cases for themselves or their clients. Advisers have referred matrimonial, commercial and employment cases and where an adviser refers a client for such a service we will pay a referral fee. I like to think we are the advisers’ choice for all their legal services needs.”
FR: With so many individuals in the UK without a will in place, how can advisers target this opportunity?
In excess of 75% of the population don’t have a Will and the adviser is well placed to refer clients for a Will because in their factfind they ask the client the question, “Do you have a Will?” When a client is buying a house it is a vital time to ensure the client has a Will. Through Blacks Connect an adviser can complete a Will questionnaire with the client in less than 15 minutes and the system will produce a draft Will there and then. Or they can simply refer the client to us and we will complete the process and pay a referral fee.
FR: You’ve recently launched Blacks Affinity on the IRESS Trigold Prospector sourcing system – what does it do and how does it simplify the provision of conveyancing advice?
The integration with Trigold is the next logical step in making it easy for advisers to produce a conveyancing quote for their clients. Everyone who is buying a house need a conveyancer and the reality is that most clients will rely on their adviser to steer them in the right direction. An adviser who uses Trigold to source their client a mortgage inputs the necessary information and that same information is them automatically used to produce a conveyancing quote without the adviser having to do anything else. A simple click to instruct and that’s it.
FR: Why don’t some advisers recommend conveyancing firms to their clients?
I think some advisers don’t feel comfortable to do so and they feel that if the client has a bad experience then it will become their fault. I would suggest that if the adviser doesn’t recommend a quality conveyancer and the client has a bad experience then the adviser is at fault. The whole mortgage deal relies on a quality conveyance and it is the advisers’ duty and in their own best interests to recommend a quality conveyancer rather than relying on the luck of the client choosing one.”
FR: Does the conveyancing market have the resources and expertise to cope with today’s housing market?
Like most parts of the market including advisers, surveyors and lenders we all got a little caught out when the market picked up. We have increased our conveyancing team four-fold in the last two years and took extra office space to accommodate the increased business volumes. The conveyancing market is consolidating and as firms grow they can find greater efficiencies in their processes and handle more cases per person. I certainly don’t see conveyancing being the hurdle which stops the housing market growing.
