Penguin Wealth Management, an Accredited and Chartered Financial Planning Firm, has launched a new business offering legal advice.

The new company, Penguin Legal, will offer bespoke legal services to Cardiff-based Penguin’s clients.

Penguin bosses decided to branch out after finding an increasing amount of the firm’s workload involved helping clients with the protection of their estates and overall positions, which require legal considerations.

A number of legal firms have launched Financial Planning arms but it is still unusual for Financial Planning firms to launch legal divisions.

The company said: “We have experienced how the solutions and the costs offered by traditional sources of help have been too high, unsatisfactory or fall short of our client service standards.

“The cost to our clients of wills, probate help or introducing power of attorney arrangements have been too high. Or, in many cases, the quality of the solution has not been what we would be expecting.

“In addition to this, the overlap between our wealth management and Financial Planning services with many of these areas is considerable and benefits from a closely co-ordinated approach.

“We therefore took the decision last year to form Penguin Legal and have spent the time since putting this together.”

Penguin Legal will be run as a separate division, but with the same management team as Penguin Wealth and from the same offices.

Alexis Thomas, an experienced Chartered Legal Executive, has been appointed as head of legal to oversee the division.

Ms Thomas has more than 12 years’ experience dealing with wills and trusts, lasting powers of attorney and estate administration, after completing her Law degree at Swansea University in 2003.