About Us
Michael Hiner (MSWW)
Managing Director, Asset Protection Specialist
About Strategic Asset Protection
Having worked in financial services for over two decades, I began my career as a Mortgage and Protection Advisor before taking the decision in 2007 to become self-employed and build a business on my own terms, setting up a limited company specialising in mortgages.
After several successful years in the mortgage market, it became clear to me that whilst clients diligently protected their homes against death or critical illness through life assurance, the conversation rarely went further. People spent years saving for their homes, raising families, building businesses, and planning for retirement, yet too little was being done, by myself or the wider industry, to protect that wealth for future generations.
In 2012 I began offering estate planning and Will writing services, building expertise and an association with the industry's leading providers. Over the years that followed, I established a highly regarded estate planning practice built on one principle: that wealth, however large or small, deserves the same level of care in its protection as it took to build.
Today, Strategic Asset Protection has grown into a professional, multi-disciplinary private client business, supporting individuals, families, and business owners across the full spectrum of estate and asset protection planning, from Wills and Trusts to complex high-net-worth structuring.
A Specialist Team, A Complete Service
We are no longer a single-adviser practice. We are a team of specialists, each focused on their own area of expertise, working together to deliver bespoke, tax-led planning for our clients. Our consultant team supports clients across estate planning, Trust Wills, Lifetime and Discretionary Trusts, Lasting Powers of Attorney, Inheritance Tax planning, and Pension Bypass Trusts.
Alongside our private client work, we have built a dedicated Business Protection division, providing specialist advice and structuring for business owners and high-net-worth families. This includes group structures and holding company arrangements, Family Investment Companies (FICs), shareholder and business protection planning, and Business Relief (BPR) and tax-efficient succession structuring.
To support more complex and substantial estates, we also operate a Corporate Trustee service and a dedicated Trust Bank Account set-up service, ensuring trusts we establish are properly administered, professionally governed, and operationally supported long after they are created. This is something many advisory firms are simply not equipped to offer.
This combination of private client estate planning, business structuring, and corporate trustee services under one roof allows us to act as a genuine one-stop specialist service for high-net-worth individuals and families, rather than referring clients elsewhere for the parts of the picture we can't cover ourselves.
Beyond the Office
I'm also the social face of the business as @theassetprotectionguy on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube where I share educational content on estate planning to a wide following of over 350k followers.
Our core offices are in Mayfair London, Chesterfield, and Chippenham, and we primarily serve clients across London, Wiltshire, Chesterfield, and the Home Counties, though we work with clients across the whole of the UK, including Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Contact us today for an initial Teams call about your estate planning needs.
Our Process
The initial Zoom call gives an opportunity to discuss your situation and your objectives. It also allows us to see how we can best help you.
The discovery meeting is all about you. We will take the time to listen to your personal, family, and business situations to get a better understanding of your specific estate planning requirements. We will ask you questions to better understand what is really important to you, as well as fully understanding the legacy you wish to leave.
Finally, we will explain the services of Strategic Asset Protection and show you how we can help you and what the next steps will be.
Please get in touch with our estate planners now to arrange an initial call.
Following your Discovery Meeting, we will prepare your recommendation report which sets out our recommendations, scope of work, timescales, and the legal fees you will pay for our services.
Once we have your agreement, we will put your plans into motion for you. We take care of all of the administration and keep you updated regularly throughout the document drafting process. Order summaries of your estate planning will be sent to you for your review and once you have approved, the final documentation will be prepared, reviewed, and legally approved. We will then be in contact to arrange the Signing Meeting and provide further guidance.
So that legal documents are valid they need to be signed and dated correctly. At the signing meeting you will need two independent witnesses present to witness the signing of the wills and once signed to documents will be legally effective.
After the signing, we will provide an execution statement giving the full names and addresses of the witnesses as proof that the wills were executed correctly and legally.
Once all the documents have been signed they will be professionally stored for safekeeping. Storage certificates will be provided to ensure everyone is clear about where the documents are stored.
Once the process has been completed it is very important that the documents are updated as events happen. Regular reviews are important to make sure the planning stays up to date. We will communicate with you from time to time to ensure your planning is up to date.
