Hull Skills & Employability

When you are a first time house buyer looking for the best morgage deal available it can be quite a daunting experience. Below is some information on who you can turn to for advice.

Independent Financial Advisers: An IFA can offer products from across the whole market with no tie-ins to any providers (or panels of providers). This allows him or her to research the whole of the market and recommend the most appropriate deal according to your individual financial circumstances. IFAs work on your behalf and offer the consumer a choice of how they pay for the advice - either on a fee basis or a combination of fees and commission.

Multi Tied Advisers: a multi-tied adviser is able to recommend a range of products from a limited number of providers. This kind of adviser may have originally been tied but has since entered into commercial relationships with providers to increase the range of products he or she can offer from a panel of providers. Only the products of those providers who the adviser is tied to are available to you. It is important to bear in mind that you will need to check the breadth of products and providers on offer before deciding if the limited choice of products available is suitable for your needs.

Tied Advisers: This type of adviser can only advise on the products of one provider. You may for instance have a good relationship with your bank or building society and simply feel comfortable dealing with that sole provider for the majority of your financial requirements. However, inevitably this limits the number of products available to just that bank or building society and as such you are missing out on the remainder of products available through all other providers in the market.

The Financial Services Authority is currently reviewing the advice and sales process of retail investment products as part of the FSA's Retail Distribution Review (RDR). The above types of advice most likely will change in 2012 to independent advice, restricted advice, simplified advice and basic advice. This will mean it should be easier to indentify whether your adviser is independent thereby advising on the whole of the market or restricted to a limited part of the market.
If you are in any doubt as to who to talk to you should visit your current bank or building society and ask thier advice.