David Ingram: Professional connections' new frontier

The most common way in which financial advisers and solicitors work together is through some form of referral arrangement. Very few of these arrangements take the form of a formal agreement because any agreement would be between firms rather than individual practitioners and would therefore require the involvement of other members of the firm - and the reality is that most law firms operate as groups of individuals rather than integrated businesses. Consequently, due diligence in the selection of financial adviser referees is pretty limited and not undertaken centrally by the practice...