We’ll be counting down a series of firms from our list each day until the end of the week, starting today, culminating in the publication of the full list on Friday.
This year, like last year, we are only ranking the top 20 firms with the rest listed on alphabetical order.
Today's list focuses on those companies whose names are between N and Z in the alphabet - although technically speaking the list goes from O-Z, as no firms beginning with the letter N made it into the top 100 this year.
We’ve done this so the list emphasises the companies themselves, rather than giving undue focus to a precise position in the rankings, or how that position might have shifted year-on-year.
But equally, we consider it important to retain a small group of firms that our metrics rank as the best of the best at the top of the list.
The Top 100 is again compiled using Financial Clarity data from ISS Market Intelligence and those statistics continue to form the backbone of our rankings.
As usual, our rankings balance financial metrics to parse which firms are growing with CII chartered or CISI accredited status.
These standards are not a guarantee of good behaviour or good practices. But they remain a decent indication of a firm trying to do the right thing by its clients, and ensure our list is not compiled using financial metrics alone.
In short, they help make our rankings a more useful snapshot of the UK financial advice industry.
More information on our methodology is below, and full details of how the Top 100 has been calculated will be published later this week. But for now, the first batch of companies - those between N and Z - are as follows:
| N-Z |
| Openwork |
| Origen |
| Pannells Financial Planning |
| Pen-Life Associates |
| Penguin Wealth Planners |
| Perspective |
| PI Financial |
| Prism Financial Advice |
| Profile Financial Solutions |
| Progeny Wealth |
| Prosperity Wealth |
| Quilter |
| Reeves Independent |
| Sandringham Financial Partners |
| Schroders Personal Wealth |
| Scrutton Bland Financial Services |
| Sense Network |
| St James's Place Wealth Management |
| Tavistock |
| Taylored Advice |
| The Fry Group |
| The Private Office |
| Thomson Tyndall |
| Tom French & Associates |
| Truly Independent |
| Unbiased Financial |
| Unique Financial Planning |
| Validpath |
| Vintage Wealth Management |
| Wade Financial Services |
| Wren Sterling Financial Planning |
What the list measures
In addition to the increased emphasis on chartered or accredited company status, our rankings retain metrics used in previous years.
That means we also look at the growth rate of advisory businesses, AUM and asset retention, and the number of years’ experience each business has managing assets in different economic and interest-rate environments.
In order to check how advisers are managing their clients’ investments, ISS Market Intelligence used data from Financial Clarity, received directly from fund managers covering the vast majority of the retail investment market, plus 14 of the nation’s biggest investment platforms. In most cases, that means advice companies’ own platforms are not included.
As a result, the Top 100 Financial Advisers list incorporates not a company’s stated level of AUM, but rather the amount held on those 14 investment platforms and with most of the nation’s biggest fund houses.
They include assets in retail advisory investments and pensions, reported to ISS Market Intelligence. On top of this, firms are only included if they had £150mn of gross sales or more over the 12-month period.
The likes of DFM assets are not included unless submitted to ISS as such.
