Financial Planning firm Lifetime Financial has set a policy that all its Financial Planners should be vaccinated before they return to wide scale face-to-face client meetings.

The firm said all clients should have the right to know if their adviser had been vaccinated before any in-person meetings.

The firm believes its policy should be an industry standard.

Ian Dickinson, managing director Lifetime Financial, said: “Given the success of online meeting we expect many of our clients will want to continue using this communication channel. However, there will be some clients, often older and those in vulnerable categories that prefer face to face meetings, and we are committing to ensure that everyone conducting face to face meetings is vaccinated.

“Currently we are conducting very few face-to-face meetings with clients and only at their request, and only when it is absolutely necessary. All meetings are socially distanced and this will continue until we can get all our advisers vaccinated.

"But going forward, and as soon as all our advisers are given the opportunity to have a vaccine we want our clients to know that our advisers have been vaccinated. We also believe this should be considered best practice for the industry.”

The UK government has said that so far 17.7m people have been vaccinated and its aims to offer a vaccine to all UK adults by the end of July.

Lifetime Financial provides Financial Planning, pensions, investments, mortgages and protection advice. It employs 60 staff and is based in Barnsley, Yorkshire.