Solicitors set date for finance centres

Solicitor-owned financial advice centres will crop up in the high street later this year when the first three of a planned countrywide network open in Devon, the Thames Valley and Teesside.The Solicitors Financial Centres (SFCs) - joint ventures between local law firms - will open in December, the Gazette has learned.Firms will hive off their financial services departments to the local SFC, but they will continue to own equity in the SFCs, in a rare waiver of the practice rule which forbids fee-sharing.The centres are the brainchild of Solicitors for Independent Financial Advice (SIFA) director Ian Muirhead, and the local SFCs will be able to rely on the Epsom-based organisation for back-up expertise in dealing with compliance requirements, marketing, and financial and business planning.The project is backed with state-of-the-art software, Fincenta, developed by SIFA with software company Exchange FS.The first three SFCs will be based in Exeter, covering south Devon; Reading, covering the Thames Valley; and Teesside.

The founder firms are Dunn & Baker in Exeter, Wokingham-based Southorns for Reading, and Stokesley-based Thorp Parker for Teesside.The firms have identified premises and produced marketing material to help pull in other local practices.SFCs will be run as limited company joint ventures with local firms, regulated by the Law Society and the Financial Services Authority.Mr Muirhead said the scheme has two clear benefits: 'First, it offers a chance to those firms that do not have the critical mass to make financial services a viable option - especially with the increase in fees and regulatory requirements coming with the introduction of the Financial Services Authority.'Second, we should appeal to those firms with an eye to the future of the legal market - as research shows that 97% of solicitors firms are not geared to offer financial services advice.'Additional schemes are in the pipeline for next year, based in Cumberland, Leeds, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Kent, central Wales and Bristol, and a launch is then planned for Scotland - where a scheme is scheduled for Dumfries and Galloway.Jeffrey Saul, financial services manager at Dunn & Baker, said the main advantage of the schemes is that 'they allow referring firms to recommend clients to a body that will give professional advice, and know that their clients will be ring-fenced from the danger of being poached as a legal client'.The scheme is similar to the push to open solicitor property shops around the country, which has made slow but steady progress due to some practitioners' reluctance to enter a field that is not directly legal.

Property shops are now expanding out of the north-east - where they are particularly strong in Darlington - into Yorkshire and the midlands.