Qualified Trust and Estate Planning Service (Qteps)

Trust and estate planning support is provided by Scott Hood, and Kevin Raftery. Scott is a Fellow of the Personal Finance Society, Chartered Financial Planner and law graduate. Kevin  is an experienced estate planner with 40 years' experience in the life & pensions industry. He has specialised in tax planning with a particular emphasis on estate planning.

Recent press coverage suggests that clients are not doing enough to plan to protect their estates for their beneficiaries. With IHT at 40% and tax receipts each year to HMRC of more than £4.7bn, there is a clear opportunity for advisers to raise the need for advance planning with their clients.

Qteps has been launched to provide advisers with independent technical support in this area of planning. The service will be delivered using the solutions based approach that advisers have become used to from QB Partners. We have developed a panel of trust providers across various jurisdictions, and the panel is expected to evolve as further solutions are required. 

A tailored Fact Find Questionnaire has been developed which will provide us with all of the information needed to prepare a comprehensive suitability report for the adviser. The suitability report will review the client's circumstances and objectives, incorporate the key planning considerations and recommend a suitable solution from the panel. The report will outline the tax implications and benefits of the recommended solution.The cost of a standard suitability report will be £1000, to include comprehensive due diligence in respect of the recommended provider. Chartered tax adviser input will also be available at additional cost.

A holistic suitability report is also available when an adviser has a client with more complex planning needs or with assets in a number of different  jurisdictions.

The QTEPS panel will be made up of a range of standard solutions to include all of the most commonly used trusts such as discounted gift trusts, discretionary trusts and loan trusts. These trusts will be available at a low fixed initial and annual fee.The documentation for each of these solutions has been prepared in a concise, easy to understand way so that they can easily be explained to clients. Each of the trusts will include trustee services from a professional trustee. All of the trust providers on panel will be able to provide more bespoke solutions at additional cost.

Please see the attached PDF for more details.