As a profession, financial advisers often get hung up that the hardest element of our job is dealing with masses of paperwork, compliance, our regulator moving the goalposts and unknown fees and levies. However, as I have sadly found out again last month this is not the case – the hardest part of our job is when one of our clients passes away.

For me personally what happened at the beginning of April was even harder, and more emotional as the person who died was my friend as well as my client. We had gone to secondary school together in Lancashire over 30 years ago and had stayed in touch through the wonders of Facebook and had a beer when we were both back “home”. When he and his wife moved back to the UK after years living overseas, they ended up living not far from me and we met up for a brew and he asked for help with getting a mortgage. My mortgage guy sorted that out and I made sure he put mortgage protection in place.

When the news filtered through to me the next day, through our mutual friends, there was a sense of disbelief that a very fit and active man could have died at home at the age of 47. However for me there was another emotion – I was scared – scared that his policy was still in force, scared that I would have to pick up the phone to his wife, scared of the difficult conversations I would have to instigate around claims, finances, documents and certificates, scared I might not do or say the right things – just plain scared to do a part of my job that you never want to have to do!

The next day I also learned that for some inexplicable reason my friend had taken his own life while at home on his own. We still have no idea why he made that choice; I am not aware of one person who saw the slightest sign of unhappiness in his life. That said men are known to suffer in silence, we are a stubborn lot and hate to show weakness as a rule, may be that is why in the UK men are three times more likely than women to take their own life and statistically the highest rate is within the 45-49 age group.

If you are reading this and you have even the slightest feelings of depression, worthlessness and you cannot see a way out of it please, please talk to someone – the Samaritans do an amazing job – https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/. My friend’s sister summed it up in her amazing eulogy – “you found a permanent solution to a temporary problem” – those words will never leave me!

The way my friend died caused another huge concern, would his life insurance policy pay out in these circumstances? I believe that most people would say that the answer would be no, but thankfully most insurers would only exclude such a claim if it came in the first year of the plan being in force. I must admit I don’t know if this applies to every insurer – but I will now be finding out and sharing that with my peers. When suicide is the most common cause of death of men aged between 16 & 45 why, as an adviser, would you set up a life insurance with a permanent suicide exclusion for your clients?

So where are we now – sadly we are stuck with no cause or death and no death certificate, we now need to wait on toxicology results and a coroner’s inquest set for the end of September!! So no pay out on the life insurance and a lady stuck with a large mortgage to pay – we have made plans to deal with that, we have spoken to the mortgage lender, my Wills & probate specialist, land registry, pension providers, employers and done everything we can to try and ensure that work continues behind the scenes while we wait and if possible find a way to speed up the insurance pay-out so his wife can move on financially and reduce her worries. My job has only just started, and I am by her side for the duration to help, it’s what I hope every other financial adviser would do. As a profession we are cast in a pretty bad light much of the time because no one sees this side of things and because it cannot be measured in pounds and pence!!

Finally, two weeks ago we had the funeral, it was pretty brutal for everyone as you might imagine, but there were many happy memories shared and laughs had in-between the tears and in the evening a few pints in our old local. The best thing, and the thing that made me so proud of doing my job, was the massive hug I got when I introduced myself to his wife and the genuine thanks for what I had done to help – absolutely priceless.