Finding and choosing an adviser

BananaRepublic

dunstonh wrote: »

We also note your anti-IFA past posting.

What I assume you mean by that statement is that some time back I commented that I had had a bad experience with a couple of IFAs. For example an IFA released the personal financial details of several people including mine to work colleagues. This resulted in my suffering some very unpleasant bullying. You could have stated that the IFA had breached client confidentiality, and the Data Protection Act. You did not once condemn his behaviour. Instead you subsequently attacked me on many occasions.

Do you really think such behaviour by an IFA is acceptable? What impression of the IFA profession do you think your behaviour creates?

dunstonh wrote: »

IFAs have around 1% of complaints at the FOS with the majority rejected. The figure floats between 0.5% and 1.5% depending on the period. FOS publish the stats.

Which also verifies 1% of complaints and just 4139 complaints at the FOS. Remember IFAs handle millions of transactions a year.

You think an IFA only handles 100 transactions a year? lol IFAs account for over 70% of pension transactions for example.

If you as an IFA post glowing comments about your profession, including specific claims, on an investment forum, is it not reasonable to ask for evidence for those claims? I think it is. And I don't think that making such a request merits a personal attack.

If you clear the red mist from your eyes, and reread my post you wil see that it is not an attack on the IFA profession. Your claim about complaints was misleading, at least according to the statistics that I was able to find. However, in your favour, my very rough figures suggest that the number of complaints against IFAs is indeed low, as you claimed. If as you claim, I underestimated the number of transactions, and I see no reason to disagree, then the number of complaints is very low.

As to your further comments: "IFAs have around 1% of complaints at the FOS with the majority rejected." The sources I gave contradict your claim that the majority are rejected. What is the source of your claim? As to the 1% figure, how many professionals does the FOS 'represent', and what proportion consists of IFAs?

"You think an IFA only handles 100 transactions a year?"

No, I merely took a figure out of thin air, assuming that you would correct me if that figure was unreasonable. How many non-trivial transactions does a typical IFA handle each year?

I did ask you some time ago what your motivations were for posting on this forum. It was and is a reasonable question. You claim to be an IFA. You spend a very significant amount of your time writing posts on this forum, including during working hours. So I assume you are posting with the agreement of your employer(s). Do you get a significant amount of trade from this forum? Or are you involved in a more general form of marketing? How does your employer benefit from your presence here?

LXdaddy

Back to the original question...

I didn't have any personal recommendations so I used unbiased.co.uk, filtered by my post code and the type of advice I was looking (approaching retirement). I got more results than is useful within a 10 mile of so radius. More than 30 IFAs I think.

More or less at random just reading the brief details on the site I selected three to see. We had the initial meeting with each of them. One did not gel - nothing to put your finger on just not someone we would want a long term relationship with.

the other two were interesting slightly different focus in the initial interview and we picked one to go with not quite by a toss of a coin but it was close.

dunstonh

I merely asked you why you posted here, given that you are an IFA, and presumably spending a fair amount of work time writing posts. It seems a reasonable question. Which you have not answered.

I don't see you asking every other poster why they post here. It has absolutely nothing to do with you. So mind your own business.

What is work time?

BananaRepublic

LXdaddy wrote: »

Back to the original question...

I didn't have any personal recommendations so I used unbiased.co.uk, filtered by my post code and the type of advice I was looking (approaching retirement). I got more results than is useful within a 10 mile of so radius. More than 30 IFAs I think.

More or less at random just reading the brief details on the site I selected three to see. We had the initial meeting with each of them. One did not gel - nothing to put your finger on just not someone we would want a long term relationship with.

the other two were interesting slightly different focus in the initial interview and we picked one to go with not quite by a toss of a coin but it was close.

Did it work out?

I admit that when I have tried to find trades, for plumbing for example, it is tough, although the IFA trade is much better regulated than plumbing.

LXdaddy

BananaRepublic wrote: »

Did it work out?

I admit that when I have tried to find trades, for plumbing for example, it is tough, although the IFA trade is much better regulated than plumbing.

Too early to say - we have just engaged the one we chose, had the second more detailed fact finding, risk assessing session and now await proposals.