Finding an indépendant financial advisor for general advice rather than being sold products by them?

maxsteam

I would suggest you pick up a suitable magazine or two from your local newsagent. It's easier to get rid of a magazine if you don't like what it says.

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You may find someone who will work transactionally even fee for task (+ hours) - the lawyer model.  Professional hourly rate likely to be pretty high and more suitable for complex specialist needs - international etc.

You can even in some circumstances get a "free" healthcheck as cost of sales on say - review of pension arrangements from some firms.  This has the benefit that you are taken through the data gather and fact find process and will test your willingness and patience for the way advice works today.  You also get most of the benefit of being forced to gather data and think about your situation in a structured way.

In all cases they are in business to make a living and it is a heavily regulated living due to the many prior issues and bad behaviour and exploitation of the consumer by some actors.  Products chosen for commission not need, innappropriate pension transfers (e.g. British Steel), involvement in directing investment to property and offshore investment and land development structures to the benefit of insiders, use of skirting the law associated businesses and transaction flow and cross holdings, involvement in outright offshore scams etc. etc. etc.  A long list of shame. 

The premise of much advice FA or IFA is to match you to something suitable to risk appetite and circumstances (what they need to defend to the regulator) and then set that up (for a % charged at investment - do the admin and either put in place the management and portfolio monitoring for 0.5% or not.  Clearly they are not going to do a zero cost setup with no ongoing service as that's charity. So what is planned and both fees need to be understood and negotiated up front even if the "commit" point to take the tied or open market product recommendation forward is later in the process.  Understand this.  Read the small print.  All of it.  Their entire process is desgined around getting you past the point of commitment to fees as smoothly as possible.  Entirely rational behaviour for a small business with cost of sales and a customer acquisition and profit motive.  Many of us rarely buy services of this sort.  Stay awake.

As a result the service you can buy within their indemnity insurance and compliance guard rails is quite structured.  Fact finding about your circumstances, assessment of risk appetite, drawing up cash flow projections, documenting investment suitability reports etc. A lot of this "must be there" generated guff has little to do with what consumers want to know or perceive as their gaps in knowledge about how to approach financial planning and understanding gaps about "the rules".  It is at best - a proxy for some of these topics.

You will quickly discover that you can't chose "not to do" any of that stuff in practice even if you think you ought to be able to. 
Even if you find the compliance paperwork off topic or of limited interest skipping it leaves the adviser and insurer wide open to complaint problems which they basically are not going to do.  Nothing you can sign "now" can take that risk away.  So they (mostly) won't run it. And that is that.  Unsurprisingly therefore the malicious customer looking to create a high risk bet and then claim mis-selling (above risk appetite - unsuitable if it tanks) and the honest slightly naive but willful customer who wants to control the process outside the guard rails are both shown the door unless they can be readily nudged into the "compliant" path.

A good independent adviser will be able to get the necessary compliance done and do a good customer listening job i.e. provide a good service.  An admin factory likely won't be as helpful as the qualified adviser is leveraged by a lot of sales and clerical support staff ticking the boxes and you will have done half the process before you get to talk to the actual adviser for a confirmation of fact find.

Fighting all this is nugatory.  Understand it and grit your teeth so that you can get through the necessary preamble and then address your actual planning needs and questions.  Or just write off the whole idea and go and do DIY research and avoid the industry as much as possible.