Checkatrade for IFAs??

jimieee

Hello,

Is there a service where IFAs are rated by their customers, like there is checkatrade.com for trades-people?

I know I can look up IFAs in the FSA website, but it doesn't seem to tell me how their customers rate their service.

Thanks,

James

dunstonh

Is there a service where IFAs are rated by their customers, like there is checkatrade.com for trades-people?

Not aware of one. Part of the problem with there being a useful one is that IFAs are still largely a cottage industry and with 28,000 advisers out there, you would be hard pushed to get any volume of responses back to make any meaningful sense from it.

You can look at the complaint stats though. IFAs account for under 1% of complaints at the FOS despite being the major distribution channel in most retail regulated products. Just 3092 complaints at the FOS with 54% upheld. So, the odds of getting a bad one are pretty low.

I would say nowadays the issue is not the quality of advice but the cost. There are some greedy advisers out there who are very capable but charge too much. Agree your charges in advance, make sure they are qualified to 2013 standards (those that are not may not be here this time next year) and listen to what is said and how (It may be a boring subject for some but it is worth understanding the basics) and you should be fine.

Reaper

Is there a way of checking the number of upheld complaints per IFA? That might be an indicator of a possible problem IFA particularly if linked to volumes. E.g. 1 in 500 customers of the IFA successfully complained.

dunstonh

Is there a way of checking the number of upheld complaints per IFA? That might be an indicator of a possible problem IFA particularly if linked to volumes. E.g. 1 in 500 customers of the IFA successfully complained.

Not exactly. The FOS do publish volumes here:
http://www.ombudsman-complaints-data.org.uk/

However, the problem is volume. That list only covers firms over 30 complaints in that period. Most IFAs suffer hardly any complaints. When you think of the millions of transactions each year that an IFA is involved in, if the FOS is seeing around 3000 complaints, then any meaningful data is going to be hard to identify.