Royal London has added an estate planning tool to its adviser support suite to help advisers identify clients who may be affected by the addition of pensions to the scope of inheritance tax.
Unused pensions and pension death benefits will come into the scope of inheritance tax from April 2027.
The framework sits alongside implementation resources and tools designed to help advisers prepare for the changes and embed estate planning processes within their advice proposition.
Ken Scott, lead proposition actuary at Royal London, said: “While inheritance tax remains a consideration for a minority of estates overall, the proportion of an adviser’s clients impacted is likely to be much more significant because many have built up substantial pension wealth alongside other assets subject to IHT.
“Since Pension Freedoms were introduced in 2015, pensions have played an important role in passing wealth between generations. These reforms are prompting advisers to rethink how their clients’ pension fits into their wider plans for passing wealth to future generations.
“For advisers, this means identifying clients who may be affected, reviewing beneficiary nominations, retirement income strategies and existing estate planning arrangements, and helping families understand the practical implications of these changes. It’s also likely many advisers will assume a more active role in record-keeping and the subsequent estate calculation upon the death of a client.”
Royal London said the launch is the first phase of a wider adviser support programme focused on inheritance tax reform. It expects to add further technical guidance, educational content, client support materials and practical planning resources over the next few months.
The dip follows new record high receipts in June and July.
Despite the August dip in receipts, the general direction of travel continues towards higher receipts. Receipts continued to rise for the five months from April 2026 to August 2026 to £3.8bn, £0.1bn higher than the same period last year.
In its latest receipts bulletin HMRC noted that higher receipts in the coming years are expected to be due to a combination of higher volumes of wealth transfers following recent liable deaths, recent rises in asset values, and the government’s decisions at various recent fiscal events to maintain the tax free thresholds at their 2020 to 2021 levels up to and including 2030 to 2031.
