Adviser professional partnerships with accountants have proved much more successful than those with solicitors, Positive Solutions has reported.
According to Fran Dunne, operations director of Positive Partnerships at Positive Solutions, speaking at the firm's IFA Masterclass event on Friday, while solicitors were initially keen and accepted referrals from advisers, they often did not give anything back.
Dunne said: "We have seen the most success with adviser partnerships with accountants than solicitors. Accountants tend to be risk averse and are not as good at looking forward. But they do recognise that quality in financial advisers so might be keen to do business with them.
"RDR is an opportunity because rightly or wrongly solicitors and accountants have looked down their noses at financial advisers. Now they are on the same playing field."
She added that making the first approach in writing made the first phone-call to a personal assistant much more accessible, as existing correspondence has been established.
Ian Cockerill, compliance director at SIFA, said: "In truth solicitors are a more difficult sell than accountants. Accountants are a little more commercial. Solicitors need more convincing that advisers are acting properly and also reminding that they have relationships with them.
"But once you get past all the barriers, solicitors have the sort of clients that genuinely need financial advice and tend to offer high net worth business."
Cockerill said the RDR had levelled out the playing field more but solicitors were very particular about solid fee-based models and high qualifications.
Adviser delegate at the masterclass event John Loring, and IFA at Positive Solutions, said he had been struggling last year but experienced significant upturn after making a genuine partnership with an accountant.
Dunne said Positive Solutions was sbeing approached more by affiliation companies wanting to offer more services to members.
