Can I bring you in, Graham? Why does financial protection matter so much when it comes to underpinning all of this from your perspective? Because you'll see you deal with practices going through this on a day-to-day basis, so you'll see a variety of scenarios, won't you?

Yeah, the legal structure only works if there's the muscle behind it.

You know, what we're talking about is in most instances, this is the biggest asset most dentists own.

But without the protection in place, you know, having things like a cross-option agreement, if there's no insurance to actually fund the purchase, how do you actually raise the money? You know, how do most dentists go to the bank and ask for another, I don't know, potentially a million pounds to buy off their partner or shareholder.

So it kind of needs to be robust so everything all ties together.

You know, when we look at what actually happens to dentists, the numbers tell a clear story.

You know, and the things that most dentists don't take into account, you know, if a principal or partner is off long-term sick, things like the surgery output drops, associates are then required to pick up any strain.

So Graham, why is it so important for Scottish dentists to use a specialist dental accountant, rather than a general practitioner accountant? Can you, if you're liaising on behalf of clients with one or the other, can you generally tell that there's a big difference in terms of that specialist knowledge and expertise, Graham?

absolutely so it protects everybody and in terms of through the financial lens Graeme What makes estate planning so critical for dentists in particular? As

Chris has already alluded, dentists typically have quite complicated financial structures.

Most have a mix of whether it's NHS pension, private pension, life cover whether it's inside or outside the business, investments, investment portfolios and of course as Chris alluded, the most valuable asset most have is whether it's the business and the practice buildings.

Sometimes these aren't all taken into account.

When we look at estate planning, we always consider questions like, how do you protect the family financially? How do we minimise tax, especially inheritance tax? And as Chris already alluded to, what happens to the practice if the owner dies or becomes incapacitated? Is there liquidity to pay tax or buy the partners out? And actually, has succession planning actually even been considered? So these discussions are deeply connected to the legal side.

you know, whether it's if your will or business agreements aren't aligned with your financial planning, you can unintentionally create tax efficiencies and leave the practice vulnerable.

But the kind of sophistication you need in terms of how these documents look both for tax efficiency for your personal assets, but also business continuity, you really need to get the right professionals from the table and look at different elements that will fall into place to make this work.

I mean, from a financial side, we see people with protection policies that, you know, were set up years ago and no longer match the circumstances.