Ongoing financial advice services

Ongoing financial advice services typically involve regular reviews and financial guidance provided to a customer by a financial adviser.

These services may include:

• reviews of investments
• adjustments to financial strategies, and
• updates on financial products.

Customers usually pay ongoing charges for these services to ensure that their financial plans remain suitable and beneficial over time.

People come to us because:

• they’ve paid for regular advice they didn’t get or believe was unsuitable
• didn’t know the cost of the advice service, or didn’t think it was good value
• they have concerns about the suitability of the initial pension or investment advice they received
• there’s been an administrative problem.

If you’re unhappy about the ongoing financial advice services you’ve received, we may be able to help.

Our service is free and easy to use. 

1. Before bringing your complaint to us, you should make a formal complaint to the financial adviser involved.
2. If they don't send you a final response letter within eight weeks – or you're unhappy with their response – you can complain to us.
3. Our complaint checker will tell you more about some of the things we need to know to get started, and help you make sure you’re ready to send us your complaint.
4. Fill in our online complaint form. Your case will be assigned to a case handler who will get in touch when they start to investigate.
5. To help us consider a complaint fairly, we may ask you for more information later on.

Use our complaint checker

We’ll assess what happened using evidence from you, the financial business and any relevant third parties. We'll also consider:  

• the relevant law, and any regulations and industry codes of conduct that applied at the time 
• whether the adviser did everything they were required to do
• whether you were invited to annual reviews, and if so, whether you knowingly declined the invitations
• whether ongoing financial advice was in your best interests
• the suitability of the advice you were given
• any communication between you and the financial adviser
• whether you were in vulnerable circumstances at the time the advice was given and, if so, what support your financial adviser offered or put in place.

Once we’ve investigated, we'll tell you whether we believe you've been treated unfairly or not. And we’ll explain how we reached our decision. 

If we think you've lost money because you received the wrong financial advice, we'll tell the financial adviser to put things right.

We may also tell them to pay you compensation for any distress or inconvenience you have suffered.

What to expect

Citizens Advice offers guidance on getting financial advice.