IFA referrals: how to get more from clients, accountants and solicitors
Why the referral share fell from 67% to 56%, how to win and keep professional introducers, the payment rules on both sides, and scripts you can adapt.
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This guide is for advisers who want referrals to run as a system rather than on luck: where the numbers stand, how to ask clients, how to win and keep accountant and solicitor introducers, and the rules that apply once money or client details change hands. We sell pre-booked pension appointments, which sit alongside referrals rather than replacing them.
How much of an IFA's new business comes from referrals?
Most of it, according to every UK survey. They measure slightly different things, so read them side by side rather than adding them up.
| Survey | Referral finding |
|---|---|
| NextWealth 2026 (318 advice professionals) | 56% of new business from existing-client and family referrals, down from 67% in 2025. Marketing up from 6% to 13%. |
| Nucleus Voice of the Adviser 2025 | 37% from existing-client recommendations; 30% from professional referrals such as accountants and solicitors. |
| ValidPath, December 2025 (74 IFAs) | 92% primarily rely on referrals. 43% say personal connections are their main source, 36% professional introducers. 31% planned more professional partnerships. |
| NextWealth 2024 | Growing firms got 21% of new clients from professional third parties, against 13% for the rest of the market (an association, not proof of cause). |
On the consumer side, the FCA's Financial Lives 2024 survey found 33% of recently advised adults said a friend or relative's recommendation helped them trust their adviser, and 16% a recommendation from an employer, accountant or solicitor. Referrals work because the trust arrives before you do.
Why is the referral share falling?
Eleven percentage points in a year is a big move. No study has pinned down the cause, so treat the following as likely contributors rather than proven reasons.
- Other channels are growing. Marketing's share doubled from 6% to 13% in the same NextWealth data. Part of the fall is simply firms adding other sources, which shrinks referrals' slice even if the number of referrals holds up.
- Client banks are ageing. NextWealth found 34% of the average advised client base was 65 or over in 2025, and the FCA says 85% of advice-firm clients are 45 or over. Retired clients' networks tend to be retired too, and a book that's winding down naturally refers less. It's also what's driving IFA business sales.
- Accountants are building their own wealth arms. ICAEW describes private equity as a major force in mid-tier accountancy. PE-backed AAB bought Magus Wealth in 2025 and two more planning firms in 2026; Moore Kingston Smith bought CMIS and Augustine Financial Planning in 2025; TaxAssist launched a financial planning joint venture with Perspective in 2026. When your introducer's firm owns a planner, the referrals tend to stay in-house.
- Introducers retire. Many adviser-accountant relationships sit between two individuals of a similar age. When one retires, the pipe closes.
Remember this is a share, not a count. The data doesn't show firms getting fewer referrals, only that referrals make up less of the mix. The practical takeaway: keep building referrals deliberately, and don't let one introducer supply a large share of your new clients.
How do you get more referrals from existing clients?
Tell them you're taking on clients
Clients assume a busy adviser is a full one. NextWealth quotes a firm CEO who changed that: "Now, in every planning meeting, we give clients a business update and make it clear we're open for business." One sentence at every review costs nothing.
Ask at the moments of value
The best times to ask are just after the client has felt what advice did for them:
- the plan or cashflow model is delivered and they can see when they can stop work;
- scattered pots have been consolidated into something they understand;
- tax-free cash has landed, or the first drawdown income has been paid;
- an annual review shows them on track after a rough year in markets.
Make the ask specific. "People like you, a few years from retiring, with four or five old pensions" produces names. "If you know anyone" produces nods.
Bring in the family
NextWealth's 2024 benchmark found an 8% increase in firms attracting clients through existing clients' wider families, which it linked to early intergenerational wealth transfer. With most unused pension funds and death benefits coming into scope of inheritance tax for deaths on or after 6 April 2027, inviting adult children to a review is sensible planning and a natural introduction. More on that in pensions and IHT from 2027.
Make it easy to pass you on
Give clients something to forward: a one-page summary of who you help, what the first meeting involves and what advice costs, plus a booking link. The friend they refer will look you up, so your website, FCA register entry and reviews need to tell the same story.
Referral rewards
Some UK firms publish client referral programmes, such as a gift or a charity donation for each introduction. If you want one, get compliance to sign it off first. A payment connected with a new client's advice can fall under the inducement rules, and under Consumer Duty nothing about it should put pressure on anyone.
How do you build referrals from accountants?
Accountants see your ideal clients first: company directors deciding how to extract profit, business owners approaching a sale, high earners caught by the tapered annual allowance, and the self-employed with no workplace pension. They're also cautious, because their name is attached to every referral.
What an accountant needs from you
- A proposition they can repeat. ICAEW expects its members to consider whether an adviser is suitable for each client, and warns against referring every client to one firm by default. Give them a clear written description of who you help, what you charge and what you don't do, so they can make that judgement quickly.
- Clarity on independence. ICAEW's guidance draws attention to the difference between independent and restricted advice. Say which you are.
- Speed. Contact their client within one working day. Nothing kills a referral relationship faster than a client telling the accountant you never called.
- Reporting back. With the client's consent, a short note after the first meeting ("we met, here's what happens next") keeps the accountant in the loop.
- Technical help. A CPD session for their team on pension contributions for directors or the 2027 IHT change is more useful to them than lunch.
- Reciprocity where it fits. Clients of yours who need an accountant are the most valuable thing you can offer back.
Pick the right firms
Aim for two or three practices whose client base matches your proposition, rather than twenty loose contacts. Look at their sector specialisms (owner-managed businesses, medics, farming, property) and their size. Check whether they already own or partner with a financial planning firm; if they do, you're unlikely to get more than overflow.
Put the arrangement in writing: who contacts the client, how quickly, what you report back, and whether any payment is involved (see the rules below). Research from ValidPath found 31% of IFAs planned to grow through professional partnerships, so expect good practices to have options.
How do you get referrals from solicitors?
Private client, probate and family law teams all meet people with pension decisions to make: executors dealing with an estate, clients updating wills and lasting powers of attorney, and couples sharing pensions on divorce. The pension IHT change has given solicitors a new reason to call advisers. IFA Magazine reported one wealth firm seeing a sixfold rise in approaches from law firms in the first four months of 2026.
Solicitors have their own rules. Under the SRA Code of Conduct, a solicitor can refer or introduce a client to a separate business only with the client's informed consent. They also have to tell the client about any financial interest in the referral, put any fee-sharing arrangement in writing, and properly account to the client for any financial benefit unless the client agrees otherwise. The LASPO ban on referral fees covers personal injury work, not referrals to financial advisers, but the disclosure duties still apply. In practice, many solicitor relationships work best with no payment at all: the solicitor gets a reliable adviser for their clients and a collaborator on the estate planning, and you get introductions.
Offer them what you'd offer an accountant: a clear written proposition, fast contact, reporting back, and technical input (a short briefing on how the 2027 change affects wills and expression of wish forms is useful to a private client team).
Can you pay for referrals? The inducement rules
This is where good intentions go wrong. It isn't legal advice, and your compliance team or network has the final word, but these are the rules they'll look at.
Paying an introducer (COBS 2.3A)
An accountant or solicitor can be paid for introducing a client to an independent adviser: the "introducing" exclusion in the regulated activities rules allows it (PERG 8.33). That doesn't settle whether you can pay. For business covered by COBS 2.3A, a firm paying a third party in connection with a service to a client has to meet the conditions in COBS 2.3A.6R and 2.3A.8R. Broadly, the payment must be designed to enhance the quality of the service to the client, must not impair your duty to act in the client's best interests, and must be clearly disclosed (existence, nature and amount, or how it's calculated) before you provide the service. A bare "£X per client" referral fee won't automatically meet that test.
Receiving a payment (COBS 2.3A.15R and COBS 6.1A)
If you give independent advice to retail clients, COBS 2.3A.15R stops you accepting fees or commission from third parties connected with that advice business, subject to narrow exceptions. COBS 6.1A requires your remuneration for retail investment and pension advice to come through adviser charges agreed with the client. So an onward referral fee paid to you (say, from another firm you send a client to) needs checking before you accept it. Disclosure alone doesn't make it permissible.
Defined benefit transfers
If any introduction could lead to a DB transfer, the contingent charging rules in COBS 19.1B apply as well. They restrict charges and remuneration arrangements that depend on, or create an incentive for, a transfer going ahead. An introducer payment linked to that outcome is a serious conflict, and any arrangement near DB transfers needs specialist compliance review before it starts.
Due diligence on anyone who sends you clients
The FCA expects advisers to do "robust due diligence on the introducers you transact with", to check introductions have been sourced legitimately, and to "maintain full and complete ownership of the advisory process". That applies to lead generators and appointment providers, and it's sensible practice with professional introducers too. The FCA's red flags include introducers completing fact-finds or risk questionnaires and clients arriving with predetermined investment choices.
InvestmentsBooked is paid by adviser firms for introductions, so this section applies to us as well. We charge a flat £500 per qualified show (no VAT added), whatever the outcome of the meeting. Consumers are told before booking that the firm pays us and that advice is paid for. The prospect asks us to book them with one FCA-authorised independent firm. We share their answers with that one firm only, and we tell them the firm's name and FRN as soon as it claims the booking, before the call. We don't give advice, fact-find or suggest products, and we exclude DB transfer seekers by default. Our lead quality page covers sourcing, consent and the due-diligence pack we share during onboarding.
How do you run referrals as a system rather than luck?
An agency that audited one UK firm's marketing summed up its referrals as "entirely passive… luck with good odds". The fix is to manage referrals like any other channel.
| Track | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Source of every new enquiry | Client, family, which introducer, which event. Without it you can't see which relationships to invest in. |
| Introductions per introducer per quarter | Spots a relationship going cold (or a firm being bought) early. |
| First meetings and clients per source | Some introducers send volume; others send fit. You want fit. |
| Share of new clients from your top introducer | Concentration risk. If one person sends a third of your new clients, their retirement is your problem. |
| Time from referral to first contact | The easiest service promise to keep, and the first one introducers notice you breaking. |
Review it quarterly. Drop the relationships that don't produce, and put the time into the two or three that do. When referrals don't fill the diary on their own, a paid channel can top up the gaps; we compare them in how to get clients as a financial adviser.
What to put in writing with an introducer
- Who does what. The introducer passes on the client's details only with the client's consent; you make contact and own the advice process from there.
- Response time. For example, first contact within one working day.
- Reporting back. What you'll share with the introducer, and that it needs the client's consent.
- Payment, if any. Whether money changes hands, how much, when, and how it will be disclosed to the client (on both sides). Many arrangements have none.
- Data. How client details are passed securely, and how long each side keeps them.
- Complaints and exit. Who handles what, and how either side ends the arrangement.
Referral scripts you can adapt
Say these in your own words, and run anything client-facing past compliance.
Referrals are still where most advisers' new clients come from. They're just a smaller share of the mix than they were, so they need the same attention you'd give any other part of the business. If you want a steady top-up while you build them, we book first meetings with people holding £250k+ in defined contribution pensions (self-declared, reconfirmed on the call) and you only pay when they turn up. See how it works, pricing or the four appointment types, including IHT planning appointments. If your clients are mostly wealthier, read how to attract high net worth clients next.
Figures checked 27 September 2026. Sources: NextWealth FABB 2026; Nucleus Voice of the Adviser 2025 (Money Marketing); ValidPath survey (Financial Planning Today); NextWealth FABB 2024; NextWealth FABB 2025; NextWealth on referrals and reach; FCA advice market survey 2025; FCA Financial Lives 2024; ICAEW mid-tier firms report; AAB (Magus Wealth, 2026 deals); Moore Kingston Smith; Perspective and TaxAssist; ICAEW on referrals to financial advisers; ICAEW Code of Ethics 2026; ICAEW DPB Handbook 2026; SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors; SRA on referral fees and LASPO; FCA PERG 8.33; FCA COBS 2.3A; FCA COBS 6.1A; FCA COBS 19.1B; FCA on introducers and lead generators; IFA Magazine on law-firm enquiries; HMRC on pensions and IHT; agency audit of a UK IFA (YouTube). This post is not legal or compliance advice. InvestmentsBooked is not authorised by the FCA and does not give financial advice.