Response To Will Writing Activities Regulatory Decision

Mind at Rest Wills – Response To Lord Chancellors Will Writing Activities Regulatory Decision

On the 14 / 05 / 2013 The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Chris Grayling MP. Issued a response to the Legal Service Boards final report issued on 13 / 02 / 2013. An article on the FT adviser website explains more about the decision click here to read. The Lord Chancellor has decided against regulating Will Writing activities. The Lord Chancellor believes that voluntary codes and consumer education could resolve the issues referred to in the Legal service Boards report.

Our response to this decision is as follows:-

Whilst we are slightly surprised with the Lord Chancellors decision, as we fully expected our industry to be regulated and still believe that this will indeed happen in the future. It is possible that Mr Grayling was taking into consideration the additional regulation related costs involved for companies such as ourselves and that he may be concerned that to some degree the additional costs involved would have to be passed on to our clients.

Whilst the decision does mean that Mind at Rest Wills are not currently required to be a member of a regulatory body. In light of the fact that we expected regulation would be put in place, we have already put procedures in place to ensure we would be ready for regulation.

These procedures include but are not limited to, providing our clients with :-

1) Terms of business.
2) Right to Cancel (7 day cooling off period).
3) A full receipt for services purchased.
4) Fact sheets and Technical sheets to ensure that our clients are educated about Wills and Estate Planning.
5) Provision of Draft Wills for checking purposes prior to issue of Final Fully Legal Will & Trust Documentation.
6) Professional indemnity insurance, covering potential liability to clients up-to £2,500,000
7) A complaints procedure.

We therefore believe we are already compliant with voluntary codes with the service that we provide.

We will continue to work with our compliance, training and indemnity partners “The Right Will” along with our legal partners, who are STEP authorised practitioners, to ensure that the recommendations and advice we give is suited to each individual client. Our company owner Jason Cherrington said “We always put customer service first and this will continue to be the case, every one of our clients circumstances are different, we will continue to provide a free initial consultation to prospective clients so that they have the opportunity to gather information on a no obligation basis and then make an informed decision”

Summary

In the absence of regulation we will continue to offer our services to our clients providing a high quality of service standards with every case. we will also continue with our training and compliance monitoring so that we will always be ready for regulation if and when it finally arrives.