Many financial advisors are putting off their succession plan until some unspecified time in the future.

Nearly 90% of financial advisors lack a formal succession plan, according to an Investment Planning Counsel survey. Although financial advisors are well-versed in the consequences for a client who fails to plan for retirement, they don’t always foresee the problems that can occur if they do not have a plan for their eventual departure from their own firm.

More often than not, their departure will be unexpected, due to an untimely death or disability. At that critical moment, the repercussions of failing to create a plan are immense. They can even set off a series of events that will push the practice into a death spiral.

Here are some of the things that can go wrong when you don’t have a succession plan in place.