Find a Financial Adviser

Advice is an important step to take when investing, particularly if you are doing so for the first time, and you should do so through an authorised financial adviser.

There are several types of financial advisers:

• independent – offering products from the whole of the market and the option to pay by fee;
• whole of market – offering products from the whole of market on a commission-only basis;
• “multi-tied” – where the adviser can advise on products from a specified range of firms;
• “single-tied” – where the adviser can advise only on the products of one product provider.

There are also firms operating a combination of the above options.

The following links will help you to find a financial adviser.  They are not exhaustive and there are other ways of finding an adviser such as looking in the phone book or contacting your local library.  Please note that IMA does not endorse any of these search engines or the advisers found on them.  

IFAP – a service provided by IFA Promotion the industry body responsible for promoting independent financial advice in the UK.

My local adviser – this is maintained by Matrix-Data Ltd, a database marketing company.

Searchifa.co.uk – this will limit the number of advisers listed to seven in each postcode prefix.

Rubii-  Independently run by Ruby Financial Limited.  Also includes adviser blogs and articles.