Many advisers are familiar with the challenges families face during probate. They know inheritance tax can create immediate pressure, they understand that estates often take longer to administer than clients expect and they’re well aware that valuable assets do not always translate into readily available cash. What I find much less common, however, is an awareness that practical funding solutions exist to bridge those gaps.

In my experience, advisers rarely miss referral opportunities because they struggle to understand estate or inheritance advances once they’re explained. More often, they miss them because they simply don’t know these products exist, or they don’t recognise the situations where they can genuinely improve a client’s outcome.

I’ve had countless conversations with advisers who have said exactly the same thing once they’ve understood how these products work: “I wish I’d known about this sooner.” Usually, they’re not talking about the conversation we’ve just had. They’re thinking about clients they’ve looked after in the past and situations that suddenly make sense with the benefit of hindsight.

This guide isn’t intended to teach advisers how to become estate lending specialists. Instead, I want to share the way I think about these situations, the conversations I encourage advisers to have and the signs that often suggest an estate or inheritance advance could genuinely help a client. Once you know what to look for, situations that previously went unnoticed become much easier to recognise.

Part 1: Why advisers miss referral opportunities

Whenever I introduce estate or inheritance advances to advisers, I’m often struck by how quickly the conversation changes. Very rarely do I need to convince someone that these products have a place once they’ve understood them. The real challenge comes much earlier because, quite simply, many advisers don’t know this is a thing. If something isn’t on your radar, you’re unlikely to ask the questions that uncover where these solutions might genuinely help.

The same applies to clients themselves. Executors and beneficiaries rarely ask whether they can access an advance because they have no reason to believe that such an option exists. Unlike a mortgage, a pension or an ISA, this isn’t a financial product people naturally expect to be available. If advisers simply wait for clients to raise the subject, those conversations are unlikely ever to happen. More often than not, it’s the adviser who first needs to make the client aware that another option exists.

That’s one of the reasons I think IFAs and brokers are particularly well placed to identify these situations. Solicitors often become involved once probate begins, whereas advisers may have known the client and their family for many years. They understand their financial circumstances, they’re aware of future plans and they’re often familiar with the wider family dynamics as well. They know who is likely to inherit, they understand significant financial commitments that may be approaching and they’re already having conversations about wealth, succession and long-term planning. That broader relationship makes it much easier to recognise when the issue is likely to be timing rather than wealth.

Sometimes advisers tell me they’re hesitant to raise the subject because they feel they need to become experts in estate lending first. I’ve never found that to be the case. Once I explain how an estate or inheritance advance works, most advisers understand the principle very quickly because, fundamentally, it’s solving a straightforward problem. The value already exists; it’s simply locked inside the estate until the legal process catches up.

From there, the questions become practical rather than conceptual. How does the application work? What information is needed? How long does it take? What role does the adviser need to play? They’re exactly the questions I’d expect, and they’re all relatively straightforward to answer. Much of the information we need is already being gathered as part of the probate process, there are no monthly repayments or early repayment charges to complicate matters and, perhaps most importantly, advisers don’t need to become specialists themselves. Our role is to guide the client through the process from beginning to end while keeping the adviser informed throughout.

One of my favourite moments is when the conversation pauses and the adviser says something like, “I’ve had two or three clients who could have benefited from this.” We hear that remarkably often. Those situations weren’t missed because the adviser failed to recognise a financial need or because they gave poor advice. They were missed because neither the adviser nor the client realised this was an option in the first place.

For me, that’s where every conversation starts. Before you can recognise when an estate or inheritance advance might genuinely help, you first need to know that it’s a possibility. Once that awareness is there, the next step is understanding who is sitting in front of you, because the conversation you have with an executor is often very different from the one you’ll have with a beneficiary.

Read the series:

• Part 1: Why advisers miss referral opportunities
• Part 2: Start by understanding your client’s role
• Part 3: Recognising when timing becomes the issue
• Part 4: Setting realistic expectations about probate
• Part 5: Looking beyond inheritance tax