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Nothing, and there is no obligation to proceed. If regulated advice follows, the fee is set out in writing before any work starts, in pounds rather than as a percentage. Ask for it that way — 1% of a transferred pension is a very different conversation once it is a number. Where advice is commission-paid by a provider, particularly on protection and mortgages, that is disclosed too. The initial conversation is there to work out what actually needs doing and in what order, and quite often the answer includes things that cost nothing at all.

Sometimes, and sometimes definitely not. Older schemes can carry guaranteed annuity rates, protected tax-free cash above 25%, a protected retirement age or valuable life cover, and those are frequently worth more than the convenience of a single statement. Exit penalties still exist on some contracts. Equally, four dormant pots with high charges and no investment review since 2011 are not doing anything for you either. It has to be checked scheme by scheme before anything is moved, and any adviser recommending consolidation before reading the scheme documents is guessing.

Yes, though lenders assess you differently and the variation between them is substantial. Some use salary plus dividends, others will consider your share of retained profit, and the number of years of accounts required ranges from one to three. What matters most is consistency: your tax return, your accounts and your application telling the same story. The trap for company directors is a tax-efficient profit extraction strategy that minimises declared income for years and then meets a lender who only counts declared income. Raise the mortgage plan before you set the extraction strategy, not after.

Start with the liability rather than a round number: what would need clearing, what income would need replacing, for whom and for how long. Then subtract what already exists — an old policy, death in service through an employer, cover attached to a business loan, and any shareholder protection already in place. The gap that remains is the number. Two things owners consistently overlook: income protection usually matters more than life cover because being unable to work is more likely than dying, and cover written in trust generally pays out faster and outside the estate.

If you have children, a business, property or anything you want to go to a particular person, yes. Without one the intestacy rules decide, and they rarely match what people assume — an unmarried partner inherits nothing under them, however long you have been together, and a surviving spouse does not automatically receive everything where there are children and a larger estate. Business owners have an extra layer: what happens to your shares, whether the articles or a shareholders' agreement override your will, and whether Business Property Relief applies. Will writing and some estate planning are not regulated by the FCA — see legal services.

Usually it passes outside your estate, which makes it one of the more useful things to leave — but only if the paperwork is current. Most defined contribution schemes pay at the trustees' discretion, guided by your expression of wish form, and that form is frequently decades out of date and still naming a former partner. It takes ten minutes to update and nobody ever does it. The tax treatment on death has been subject to repeated policy change, so this is an area to review periodically rather than set once, and it should be looked at alongside your will rather than separately.

That is the right question to ask any adviser, and the honest safeguards are these: fees and commission disclosed in writing before you decide, a recommendation you can take away and think about, and a clear reason for each product tied to a specific gap rather than a general principle. If a recommendation arrives without a written reason you can restate in your own words, push back. Plenty of health checks end with two or three actions that cost nothing — updating an expression of wish, cancelling duplicated cover, moving an emergency fund somewhere earning interest.