Who are FTAdviser's top 20 financial advice firms?

Over the past year, the financial services sector has been rocked by significant events. 

These include Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the rising cost of living, an energy crisis and a swath of tax changes unveiled as part of the new prime minister’s Trussonomics plan for growth, which helped the pound tumble to record lows.

Yet despite this, the list of businesses in the FTAdviser Top 100 2022 presents a snapshot of the remarkable resilience shown by the entire advice sector. 

This year marks 10 years since the introduction of the Retail Distribution Review; seven years since pension freedoms came into force and six years since the Financial Advice Market Review highlighted serious issues that needed to be addressed.

And over that time, businesses have adapted to change, whether this be tax policy turning on a pin, dealing with the after-effects of the pandemic or embracing the digital transformation.

But finding the right balance between face-to-face advice and online services – as well as developing robust succession plans to future-proof the advice industry – could yet result in some significant changes to business models.

We will be keeping a close eye on that, as well as the more familiar challenges facing advisers and their businesses, in the months and years ahead.

And here we can reveal the top 20 - which are ranked, in line with our process of only ranking the top 20 and listing the rest by alphabetical order.

The methodology

You can read the full methodology by clicking on the report above.

FTAdviser’s Top 100 Financial Advisers is based on Financial Clarity data, from ISS Market Intelligence. 

In keeping with our policy of revising the methodology to avoid a skew to the largest firms, we also reward businesses that are either chartered by the Chartered Insurance Institute or accredited by the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment.

Of course, 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 customers, and help to ensure our list is not compiled using financial metrics alone.

As a result, seven of our top 10 companies have either chartered or accredited status, as do 17 of the top 20.

The top 20 is where the rankings end this year. As per last year, businesses outside this group are now listed in alphabetical order, rather than based on the data. 

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. Indeed, sometimes firms' positions might change significantly over the year.