"Independant Financial Advice"

cazbing

I wondered if anyone could advise me on how to find a reliable, truly independant financial advisor?

My initial contact with a supposed IFA turned out to be the exact opposite, when after my mortgage had been arranged, I discovered they where tied to the company whe were now providing my life cover.

My second experience started of well enough but as soon as my remortgage deal got a bit complicated they washed their hands of it, despite telling me at the beginning they would sort the whole process from signing the paperwork to the completion of the remortgage.

I would like to find an IFA, who I can go to for repeated financial advice on varying issues and trust they are really whant they claim to be.

Thanks

dunstonh

My initial contact with a supposed IFA turned out to be the exact opposite, when after my mortgage had been arranged, I discovered they where tied to the company whe were now providing my life cover.

They cannot be independent then and lied. Or possibly played on the fact they were whole of market for mortgages but didnt comment on the protection side. That is a fairly common bad practise and one the FSA has never really tried to stop and recent rules changes have made it even easier for tied/multi-tied to pretend to be IFAs.

My second experience started of well enough but as soon as my remortgage deal got a bit complicated they washed their hands of it, despite telling me at the beginning they would sort the whole process from signing the paperwork to the completion of the remortgage.

Not very nice but its mortgage advice classification and not IFA classification. Are you trying to get advice from the wrong type of adviser?

I would like to find an IFA, who I can go to for repeated financial advice on varying issues and trust they are really whant they claim to be

Someone pretending to be an IFA is hardly a fault of IFAs so you cannot hold that against us. At the end of the day, getting an IFA you trust and is competent is no different to getting someone in any profession who is very good. There will always be the good, bad and ugly. You can often increase the odds of finding a good one by sticking to smaller local firms rather than salesforces. Salesforces promote a sales culture whereas small local firms of a handful of advisers wouldnt have that. Plus the local firms rely on word of mouth and goodwill to get business and have to work hard to build that up.

Finally you can verify the status of an IFA by looking them up on https://www.unbiased.co.uk and do a postcode search. The database there covers around 95% of all current IFAs.

cazbing

Thanks. I'm not tarring all IFA's with the same brush I promise.

MortgageMamma

dunstonh wrote:

They cannot be independent then and lied. Or possibly played on the fact they were whole of market for mortgages but didnt comment on the protection side. That is a fairly common bad practise and one the FSA has never really tried to stop and recent rules changes have made it even easier for tied/multi-tied to pretend to be IFAs.



Not very nice but its mortgage advice classification and not IFA classification. Are you trying to get advice from the wrong type of adviser?

Someone pretending to be an IFA is hardly a fault of IFAs so you cannot hold that against us. At the end of the day, getting an IFA you trust and is competent is no different to getting someone in any profession who is very good. There will always be the good, bad and ugly. You can often increase the odds of finding a good one by sticking to smaller local firms rather than salesforces. Salesforces promote a sales culture whereas small local firms of a handful of advisers wouldnt have that. Plus the local firms rely on word of mouth and goodwill to get business and have to work hard to build that up.

Finally you can verify the status of an IFA by looking them up on https://www.unbiased.co.uk and do a postcode search. The database there covers around 95% of all current IFAs.

See bold. what is this supposed to mean? are you saying mortgage advisors are not fit to give mortgage advice and that the client should approach an IFA for this? If so, I resent that -the fact the a whole of market mortgage advisor specialises purely on mortgages and protection, becoming a master in their field, whereas in IFA has his fingers in so many pies they cannot possibly have the same extent of knowledge as an experienced and dedicated independent mortgage advisor. I actually have a firm of IFA's that outsource their mortgage clients to me for that exact reason.

Equally, most mortgage advisors including myself are FPC qualified and therefore able to give equal quality life assurance advice.

As we do not know enough about the OP's circumstances to judge why the firm dumped her for mortgage advice, its unfair to comment, there could have been a very viable reason. It is only right if a professional is out of their depths they take the necessary guidance or leave well alone.

dunstonh

MM - take a read of it again. You must have misread it.

The OP said "My second experience started of well enough but as soon as my remortgage deal got a bit complicated they washed their hands of it, despite telling me at the beginning they would sort the whole process from signing the paperwork to the completion of the remortgage."

So, I said what they did isnt very nice. And it isnt. To start the work and then give up half way through isnt a very nice thing to do.

I then commented that perhaps the OP was looking for the wrong type of adviser. i.e. he has been looking at IFAs when what he really needs is a mortgage adviser.

MortgageMamma

dunstonh wrote:

MM - take a read of it again. You must have misread it.

The OP said "My second experience started of well enough but as soon as my remortgage deal got a bit complicated they washed their hands of it, despite telling me at the beginning they would sort the whole process from signing the paperwork to the completion of the remortgage."

So, I said what they did isnt very nice. And it isnt. To start the work and then give up half way through isnt a very nice thing to do.

I then commented that perhaps the OP was looking for the wrong type of adviser. i.e. he has been looking at IFAs when what he really needs is a mortgage adviser.

Thanks for clarification I apologise I must have misread. I am a grumpy moo when I've been up all night. It would be interesting to know though exactly HOW the mortgage became a bit complicated - as far as I can see unless something was going on that shouldnt have been I can't understand why a firm would wash its hands of making money? The only other reason I can think of was that the mortgage amount was so low it was all work and no profit, in which case a fee should have been charged? I'm puzzled.