FTAdviser Top 100  

FTAdviser Top 100 Advisers: the next batch of firms

FTAdviser Top 100 Advisers: the next batch of firms

Welcome to the latest installment of FTAdviser's Top 100 Financial Advisers 2022, our annual rankings detailing some of the best and fastest-growing advisory firms across the UK.

This is the final group of firms listed alphabetically, before we publish the top 20 and the full list tomorrow.

Today's list focuses on those companies whose names are between A and E in the alphabet. 

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As we mentioned earlier this week, firms outside the top 20 are now listed alphabetically 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.

However, we still 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 aren’t 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 isn’t 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 A and E - are as follows:

A-E
A&J Wealth Management
Advanta Wealth
Advies Private Clients
Alan Boswell
Alexander Grace
Altor Wealth Management
Amber River
Antrams Financial Services
Aspira Corporate Solutions
Atomos (formerly known as Sanlam)
Balmoral Asset Management
Best Practice IFA
Carrington Investment Consultants
Charles Stanley
Chase de Vere
Chetwood Wealth Management
Clarity
Clark Gillone
Close Brothers
David Williams IFA
Douglas Steers & Co
Ellis Bates
Emery Little
Equilibrium Financial Planning
Evelyn Partners

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.