IFA Direct Home customer reviews - Rating: 3.4 from 34 customer reviews and experiences for ifa-direct.com

IFA Direct Home

RMT Group Limited, trading as IFA Direct Home, is licenced by the H.M. Government of Gibraltar for the provision of generating online financial services leads. License number BL160240. IFA Direct Home provides access to local for specialist Independent Financial Advisors who are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. All advisors include both Independent Financial Advisors and Restricted Advisors.

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IFA Direct Home

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Partner ID	A2F2A65D0EDBB38
Status	valid
Total Reviews	181
Last Updated	2019-03-14T17:03:18+00:00 2019-03-14T17:03:18+00:00

Address	RMT Group Limited Gibraltar Business Centre, 1d Centre Plaza, Horse Barrack Lane, Gib
Website	ifa-direct.com
Contact	Tel: +350 200 44858 Email:
Authorised representative	Ryan Mellor
Recommend

3.4 / 5

Total reviews: 181

Calculated from 34 customer reviews (last 12 months)

Positive 77.35%
Neutral 3.87%
Negative 18.78%

Total reviews: 181

Calculated from 34 customer reviews (last 12 months)

77.35%
3.87%
18.78%

Customer reviews - From Customers for Customers

Review Given Date
(newest first)
Review Given Date
(oldest first)
Rating
(highest first)
Rating
(lowest first)

There was some confusion arising from the fact that I thought I was going to an office in *** to have the meeting, and at no stage was I told that the representative was coming to my house. Having said that IFAdirect was very helpful when I phoned up to say that I could not find the address.

5 / 5

Very happy with the service provided so far

5 / 5

Great service

5 / 5

Nobody contacted

1 / 5

Not very good I thought that going through Unbiased.co.uk as advised by my pension provider I would be offered a number of financial advisers to choose from as it is I have received one contact who is based in Colchester!!

2 / 5

We are not unbiased.co.uk. Your ifa-direct.com team

No contact has been made

1 / 5

the whole service was not what i wanted at all how can i possibly evaluate anything you only supplied one contact I have no way of measuring whether they are any good you did not give me a name so I cannot look at their website nothing to compare them with I feel pressurised rsther than being able to choose a provider

1 / 5

We were sorry to hear about your mixed experience regarding your Financial Advisor. We work with some very large firms who have multiple advisors. In these instances we just provide the details of the firm. Your ifa-direct.com team

Rubbish. Instead of getting a list to choose from all i got was a single provider 50 miles away

1 / 5

We were sorry to hear about your mixed experience regarding your Financial Advisor. It is very normal for Financial Advisors to travel up to 1 hours travel time which could equate to 50 miles. Your ifa-direct.com team

Crap and misleading service.

I approached IFA Direct thinking that, understandably, I'd be referred to an IFA (INDEPENDENT Financial Adviser). Instead I was referred to a RESTRICTED financial adviser......and, even worse, a St James's Place 'partner'.....with their conflict of interests in only being able to recommend their in-house investments.....including their Investment Bonds with their 6% early disinvestment penalty. Such a 'recommendation' of (a) a Restricted adviser, and (b) conflicted by their own Vertically-Integrated structure, ie in-house centralized investment proposition is anything but INDEPENDENT, ie impartial/unbiased.

This is service is a scam.

1 / 5

This review was written by a Financial Advisor called Mark Coomber who clearly needs to get out more. He has a problem with the name IFA Direct Home and spelling of the word Advisor. Generally speaking most people in the UK refer to Financial Advisors as IFAs. The distinction between a Financial Advisor and an IFA was made with Retail Distribution Review in 2012 when the term Restricted Advisor was created. Most people are unaware of this. They are qualified in exactly the same way but are restricted in terms of the products or advice that they can offer. This is why there is a clear statement that we provide both types of advisor written on every page of the site. At the first meeting, the restricted advisor is bound by FCA rules to disclose this fact.

Below is an email he wrote to us, starting with WTF.

This is our response to his first email.

“We provide access to both fully Independent Financial Advisors (IFAs) and Restricted Advisors and refer to both types of advisors as a 'Financial Advisor' throughout this website.” This is stated very clearly at the bottom of the website. We have already adjusted the website following comments from the FCA and several compliance departments (restricted).

Advisor can be spelt 'Advisor' or Adviser.

First email

WTF?!

How on earth can your business be called 'IFA Direct Home' and then steer potential clients towards a RESTRICTED adviser, such as a SJP 'partner'....and in a vertically-integrated firm, too ?

A Restricted adviser is not an INDEPENDENT Financial Adviser. [ It really is very simple, but you don't seem to have grasped this differentiating factor. ]

Companies such as your own really are not doing anything to improve transparency within the UK regulated financial advice market by muddying the waters, and confusing consumers. That is irrespective of what the small-print on your website states; the name of the business and its website banner quite clearly states 'IFA-...'.....when, in fact, there is no 'I' (for Independent). To say this is misleading the public would be an understatement.

Indeed, a number of Restricted advice firms have found themselves in hot-water with the FCA for misleading consumers by claiming they are of Independent regulatory status when they are not.

I will be needing to bring this matter to the attention of the editorial staff at the likes of FT Adviser, New Model Adviser, Money Marketing etc. These are publications and websites that I know for a fact are read by the FCA.

BTW, the correct spelling here in the UK is advisEr and not advisOr.

Mark Coomber Chartered MCSI
Independent Financial Planner

Second email.

Ryan

I beg to differ. As will many other Independent Financial Advisers.

To clarify my point - since I think you've missed it - to use the trading name 'IFA Direct Home' simply misleads the reader into believing that their enquiry will only be directed to IFA's.

IFA is not an abbreviation that can legitimately be used to describe an adviser of Restricted regulatory standing.

In this respect, you may wish to update your knowledge with the following, for example: https://www.fca.org.uk/consumers/types-investment-adviser

Within the link you will note that the FCA state the following....

Restricted advisers
A restricted adviser or firm can only recommend certain products, product providers, or both.
The adviser or firm has to clearly explain the nature of the restriction. If you are not sure you should ask for further information, but some examples of restricted advice are where:
o the adviser works with one product provider and only considers products that company offers
o the adviser considers products from several – but not all – product providers
o the adviser can recommend one or some types of products, but not all retail investment products
o the adviser has chosen to focus on a particular market, such as pensions, and considers products from all providers within that market
Restricted advisers and firms cannot describe the advice they offer as 'independent'.

Mark

ps. AdviSOr is the generally accepted North American derivative of the English word AdvisEr.

Your ifa-direct.com team

Really could not fault the service in any way, Initially spoke to *** who could not have been more friendly . polite and helpful.
The advice from the financial adviser was superb.

5 / 5

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