Oakwood Financial Planning

The Problem#

• Financial advisers create detailed plans showing how pensions, ISAs, and life policies will perform over a client’s lifetime — but these plans exist in complete isolation from the client’s will
• Pension death benefits pass outside the estate via a nomination to scheme trustees; life policies written in trust also bypass probate — yet the financial plan and the will are drafted by different professionals who never share structured data
• Clients discover too late that their pension nomination contradicts their will, or that their life policy was not written in trust and will therefore attract inheritance tax
• The disconnect means no single professional holds the complete picture of what passes inside and outside the estate

How They’d Use INHERIT#

• Life insurance policies use insurance-policy.json with policyType: "life", the writtenInTrust boolean, and sumAssured via common/money.json
• Pension death benefits are modelled as nonprobate-transfer.json entries with transferType: "beneficiary_designation", recording the scheme name, nominated beneficiaries, and whether the nomination is binding or advisory
• ISAs and investment accounts are asset.json entries with category: "financial" and appropriate subcategory values
• The passesOutsideEstate: true field on nonprobate-transfer.json flags assets that will not form part of the probate estate — enabling advisers to show clients the full picture
• The uk-england-wales extension’s nilRateBand and residenceNilRateBand temporal rules allow accurate IHT exposure modelling

The Integration#

• Export-focused: Oakwood generates INHERIT documents summarising the client’s financial holdings and their estate implications
• These are shared with the client’s solicitor, who imports the financial data alongside will and bequest instructions, creating a unified estate picture for the first time
• The solicitor no longer needs to chase the IFA for policy details — they arrive in structured form

The Business Case#

• Clients who receive integrated financial and estate planning advice show 25% higher retention rates
• Higher average assets under management as clients consolidate fragmented holdings once they see the full picture
• The firm projects £120,000 in additional annual revenue from deeper client relationships and increased referrals from solicitors who value the structured data exchange
• Solicitor referrals become bidirectional — solicitors send clients to Oakwood because they know the financial data will come back in a format they can use

Before / After#

Without INHERIT:

1. Client meets their financial adviser, who builds a plan covering pensions, ISAs, and life policies
2. Client separately meets a solicitor, who drafts a will covering the estate
3. Neither professional sees the other’s work — pension nominations and trust status remain invisible to the solicitor
4. Client dies; executor discovers the pension nomination names an ex-spouse, or the life policy was never placed in trust
5. Family faces unexpected IHT liability or contested nominations — months of delay and thousands in legal costs

With INHERIT:

1. Oakwood creates an INHERIT document capturing all financial holdings, nominations, and trust status
2. The document is shared with the client’s solicitor, who imports it alongside the will
3. Conflicts — stale nominations, untrusted policies, IHT exposure — are visible immediately
4. Client dies; executor receives a unified estate picture from day one, with no hidden surprises