By Legal Futures Associate SIFA Professional
Are you keen to expand your knowledge beyond legal issues? We offer solicitors free access to our monthly webinars, where industry experts explore a range of topics related to financial services.
SIFA Professional host these sessions aimed at growing your knowledge beyond legal matters. These sessions are designed to demonstrate how the legal and financial professions can work collaboratively for the benefit of your clients. These sessions include insights from industry experts on a range of financial services topics.
Registration is simple, and you can earn a Continued Professional Development record by joining in. See full details below and link to register.
This resource offers complimentary training for you, showcasing to your regulator that you are actively engaged in enhancing your professional development beyond the legal field—an initiative that the SRA is eager to see demonstrated.
Webinar Title – IHT Planning Masterclass – Trusts vs Family Investment Companies
Time: Wednesday 19 March 2025 – Start Time: 11am
Length: 45 minutes.
Speaker : Elaine Cruickshank, Tax and Trusts Manager – Aegon
Elaine is a qualified accountant and member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners. She is Tax and Trusts Manager in the Aegon adviser platform sales team and has been with Aegon for over 21 years. She provides tax and trusts support to the Aegon adviser platform sales team and advisers. She is Aegon’s tax and trusts spokesperson – writing articles, delivering webinars and presenting at seminars.
Synopsis
Given the proposals to extend inheritance tax (IHT) to most pension funds and death benefits, we will compare trusts and family investment companies as possible solutions for IHT and intergenerational planning. We will focus on the tax treatment of these arrangements along with various other important non-tax related factors.
We will also revisit the normal expenditure out of income exemption for clients that want to drawdown their pension to make regular gifts from surplus income. Finally we will look at planning opportunities in relation to preserving the residence nil rate band.
Learning objectives: By the end of this session, delegates will be able to:
- Compare where and when a Family Investment Company could be a suitable alternative to trusts.
- Recap on the main types of trusts that can be utilised in estate planning
- Given the potential extension of IHT to pensions, explain possible IHT planning opportunities using normal expenditure out of income exemption and to help protect the residence nil rate band.
PS. SRA Comment – “Is existing continued professional development process still fit for purpose”?
Why should you consider registering?
Consider the insights and messaging from your regulator as a compelling reason to actively participate.
A few months ago, the SRA published their annual assessment of ongoing competence, making it clear to individual lawyers and COLPs alike that the focus on maintaining skills and knowledge remains intense. The SRA, facing scrutiny from the Legal Services Board, is committed to upholding the quality of legal services and fostering consumer confidence and trust in the profession—objectives we all share and strive for.
Interestingly the report also identified wider challenges that some solicitors are facing to meet their obligation to maintain confidence – ‘This included some solicitors only focusing their learning and development on maintaining technical legal knowledge.’
The regulator has made it abundantly clear that they are approaching this matter with utmost seriousness. The report outlines various methods they will employ to oversee the profession, particularly focusing on how firms, especially COLPs, are managing training for their teams and ensuring their competence. For individual solicitors, the SRA will be inspecting training records to assess whether they are engaging in learning and development, the methods they are using, and their commitment to regularly evaluating their own L&D needs. Additionally, they will conduct random checks following the renewal of solicitors’ practicing certificates. In essence, both firms and individuals must prioritize this issue and embed ongoing competency into the foundation of their strategic plans.
COLP & COFA Conference 2024 – Repeating the message…
This message was reiterated yet again by Richard Williams, Policy Associate at this year’s SRA COLP & COFA Conference. The same message was provided to the delegates, that really mirrored the one provided in 2023, which does beg the question, are COLP’s getting the message across to their firms about the need to address this issue? Mr Williams spoke about the report and made several statements regarding monitoring of professional development and looking to “significantly strengthen the annual declaration” and “the existing process to see if it is still fit for purpose”?
