Webinar recording: Creating a sustainable family business: A 2025 guide to financial planning

In December, we hosted the latest in our series of  family business  webinars, presented by Silvia Vitiello, Yvette Jacobs-Lee, Guy Sterling and Rob Edwards. The session focused on the key financial planning steps and tailored strategies that will be crucial for 2025 for you and your family business.  

Our team of experts are delighted to share their key takeaway points from the webinar: 

• Maintain clear and open communication with key individuals in your family business and engage regularly to ensure everyone is aligned. 
• It’s a good time to review the succession plans for your family business, ahead of changes to business relief from inheritance tax announced to apply from April 2026.   
• Consider the options of lifetime gifting and diversifying ownership. 
• Creating a new class of growth shares allows capping the value of existing shares to limit inheritance tax for older shareholders, while future business growth benefits new shares can be issued to the younger generation. 
• Consider the opportunity to pay bonuses before the end of the tax year. 
• Family trust arrangements may be a good route for succession planning; more details on how the restriction to business relief will apply are expected in early 2025. 
• Begin planning now for higher National Insurance rates and evaluate the potential for salary exchange. 
• Clients who have significant pension assets and are approaching retirement may wish to accelerate the drawdown of their pension. 
• Given the recent Autumn Budget changes, it is more important than ever for business owners to consider life insurance in their inheritance tax planning.   
• A discounted or loan trust can offset a large inheritance tax bill by allowing the settler to retain access to their capital while allowing investment growth to build up.

Our family business experts have decades of experience in the above areas mentioned, as well as every other aspect of running and growing a family business in the short-term and the far-off. To learn more about our tailored solutions and how we can help you, please  contact  our team.