Self-Employed Financial Adviser – United Kingdom

Company Description

Prestige IFA Jobs is delighted to be representing our client, a directly authorised and independently owned UK financial planning firm, in the search for an experienced self-employed adviser to join with their own client book.

This is a place inside a small, deliberately built firm. Our client is building towards a team of around twenty advisers, and the fit matters as much as the book. They would rather meet a handful of well-matched advisers than a long list of speculative ones.

Advisers are based in the UK and work fully remotely, with offices in Manchester and London. Self-employed advisers bring their own practices and use the firm’s platform, proposition and infrastructure. Employed advisers look after the firm’s own core clients. This brief is for the self-employed route.

Our client holds its own FCA permissions. There is no network taking a slice, no product provider shaping the panel, and no consolidator parent. The adviser recommends within a wide panel of managed portfolio services, one provider or a blend, and records why. There is no single mandated model.

The infrastructure is already in use: fact-finds, suitability letters, meeting notes, annual reviews, portfolio monitoring and client communications. The aim is that the adviser spends their time on relationships and judgement.

Specialist work stays in-house. They have cross-border capability, STEP-qualified trust and estate expertise, and support for families whose affairs have outgrown standard advice.

Commercial terms are transparent, and there is a pre-agreed first right for the firm to buy the adviser’s book, so the route to realising the value of the practice is agreed up front. Terms reflect book size, fee basis and the support the adviser needs. They work with the adviser’s current ongoing fee, typically between 0.50% and 1.00%, rather than requiring an immediate reprice.

Client agreements sit with the firm. That gives the adviser a stable foundation for a long-term practice, with continuity for the client, the adviser and the firm.

Job Description

The practice you bring

• Look after a planning-led book you have built yourself: pensions, investments, tax, estate and, where it is part of the practice, cross-border work
• Run ongoing advice on your current fee basis
• Keep reviews, recommendations and file notes to the firm’s documentation standard
• Stay with the client. Specialist depth is there so the relationship does not have to be referred away

How you work inside the firm

• Select within the firm’s investment proposition and record the reason on the file
• Work within the firm’s governance and supervision
• Use the tools already in place, so administration does not take the time that belongs with clients

Qualifications

Candidates should have:

• Level 4 Diploma as a minimum. Chartered, STEP or an equivalent specialist qualification is a strong positive. A current Statement of Professional Standing
• A clean FCA record and a clean complaints history, and be a registered individual now, or very recently
• Typically five years or more advising in their own right, with client relationships they have built personally
• A book that can move, broadly £15m to £100m of transferable client assets. The natural centre of the range is £25m to £75m. Larger books are welcome and are structured individually
• An existing ongoing advice fee, usually between 0.50% and 1.00%
• A clear picture of notice periods, restrictive covenants, and whether the clients sit with the adviser or the current firm
• A willingness to work inside the firm’s investment proposition, documentation standard and supervision
• UK residence. This brief is for advisers in the UK

This tends to suit network and appointed representative advisers who want a wider panel, sole-practitioner principals who want the regulatory load taken off them, advisers inside consolidated firms who want to get back to advising, specialists in cross-border, trust, business exit or intergenerational planning, and advisers five to ten years from exit who want a defined route for the value of the practice.

Additional Information

• Who they will not progress

• Transactional or product-led advisers with no ongoing advice relationship
• Books that are mainly mortgage or protection, with no meaningful investment or pension proposition
• Anyone with a regulatory history, complaints record or past-business issue that would not withstand scrutiny
• Advisers who want a licence and no involvement

This is the independence of running your own practice, with the firm’s permissions, infrastructure and supervision behind it.

Our client is looking for a small number of established advisers with a real book, a planning-led client base, and the discipline to work inside a proper firm.

If that is you, Prestige IFA Jobs would be interested in hearing from you. Please include, with your application, transferable client assets and the number of relationships, recurring revenue and the fee basis, your notice period and any restrictive covenants, and who owns the client relationships.

Apply now by clicking below to be considered for this opportunity.

• A wide managed-portfolio panel, with the adviser choosing the structure that fits the client
• Technology already in use across advice, reviews and client communications
• In-house cross-border, trust and estate, and complex family-wealth support
• Professional indemnity and operational support, including where a UK-based adviser later spends time overseas while continuing to serve UK clients
• Transparent terms, set around book size, fee basis and the support required
• A pre-agreed first right for the firm to buy the book
• Your current ongoing fee basis retained, rather than an immediate reprice

Package and support

Self-employed adviser role inside a directly authorised UK firm Remote working from anywhere in the UK, with offices in Manchester and London