UK IFA databases: where to get a prospecting list of every FCA-authorised advice firm

If you've landed here searching for "a list of UK IFAs" or a "database of UK wealth management firms" you probably fall into one of two camps. The first is a consumer looking for an adviser - this post isn't for you; try Unbiased or VouchedFor. The second is somebody whose job depends on knowing the UK advice market as a commercial target: building a call list for a new fund launch, sizing an acquisition pipeline, or analysing the UK financial advice market for research or consulting. This post is for you.

There is no single, canonical list of "UK IFAs." There are roughly 5,000 advice firms and around 27,000 individual advisers authorised by the FCA, but the definition of "IFA" itself is contested (independent vs restricted, advice vs planning, national vs network AR, wealth manager vs financial planner), and the underlying data is spread across a handful of public sources and several commercial vendors who re-sell it at very different price points.

Here's the honest map.

Where can I find B2B databases or lists of UK individual financial advisers?

1. Siorra

What it is: A subscription B2B data intelligence platform built specifically on the UK IFA industry — combining the FCA Register, Companies House streaming data and dozens of other data sources into a single correlated dataset, all enriched with AI.

Why you'd use it for prospecting: Every other vendor on this list sells you a cleaner version of the FCA Register. Siorra is focused exclusively on IFAs and wealth managers, giving the ability to provide data points that matter - AUM banding, advice specialisms, client wealth tiers, succession stage, fee model - in the vocabulary your buyers actually use. If your ICP is "North of England IFA firms, £100m–£500m AUM, three or more advisers" - that's a Siorra query. It isn't a filter you can build on the FCA Register.

Best for: B2B users - asset manager distribution teams narrowing the market to firms that actually match a fund's ICP. PE-backed consolidators screening acquisition targets by succession stage and financial health. Platform providers modelling adviser churn and competitor exposure. Corporate finance advisers benchmarking potential clients. Market research firms and management consultants looking to map the market.

Trade-off: It's a paid subscription aimed at operators with a commercial reason to know this data well and act on it, not a cheap list rental. If you just need a CSV of names and email addresses for a one-off event, Siorra might not be the best fit.

Pricing: Per-seat subscription; get in touch for a scoped quote.

2. The FCA Financial Services Register

What it is: The regulator's authoritative public record of every authorised firm, appointed representative, and approved individual in UK financial services. The public website lets you search one firm at a time. A free developer API (rate-limited to 50 requests per 10 seconds) is available on request.

Why it matters for prospecting: It is the source of truth. Every vendor in this post — including Siorra — is downstream of it. Firm status, FRN, permissions, controlled functions, appointed representative relationships, regulatory history: all here.

Best for: Confirming regulatory status before onboarding. Verifying FRNs.

Trade-off: The Register is functionally unusable as a prospecting tool in its stock form. There's no bulk export, no categorisation by firm type, no filter for "IFA" vs any other business type, and no enrichment. The API returns one firm at a time. To turn it into a list you can call, you need either weeks of engineering or a commercial vendor who has already done that work.

Price: Free (API and public search).

3. The FCA Register Extract Service (RES)

What it is: A paid, subscription-based service run by the FCA that delivers the Register as a weekly bulk data extract under licence. This is the same data as the public Register, but in a form you can actually load into a database.

Why it matters for prospecting: If you want the full Register as a dataset — not just snapshots via the API — this is the official route. It's what most serious vendors in this market buy and then resell or enrich.

Best for: Firms with in-house data teams who want raw, authoritative FCA data on a weekly cycle and are willing to do their own enrichment and classification on top.

Trade-off: It's Register data only. No Directory data (i.e. individual adviser records in their certified/assessed roles), no contact details, no classification, no financial health. You're buying the raw material, not a product. Resale and redistribution are governed by a strict licence.

Price: Approximately £20k/year under reseller licence.

4. Hackford

What it is: A London-based RegTech platform that launched in June 2025. It takes the FCA Register, classifies all ~70,000 regulated firms into market segments and subsegments (including "holistic financial planners" and "wealth managers"), and makes the dataset searchable by permissions, roles, and recent changes. Watchlists and weekly change alerts are included.

Why you'd use it for prospecting: Compared to the raw Register, it's dramatically faster to get to a workable list. If your ICP is defined in terms the Register itself uses (permissions, SMF roles, firm type), Hackford will get you from nothing to a clean list in an afternoon. The pricing is unusually accessible for this market.

Best for: Compliance consultants and RegTech vendors selling into regulated firms. Sales teams that define their ICP by regulatory permissions or controlled functions. Anyone who wants FCA Register search without the enterprise price tag.

Trade-off: Hackford's classification and search layer sits on top of the FCA Register — it's a better Register, not a different dataset. For pure FCA-permission-driven prospecting it's excellent; for commercial/strategic targeting on IFA and wealth manager specific metrics that live outside the Register, it runs out of road.

Price: From around £600+VAT per user per year (as advertised at launch); 7-day free trial available.

5. Autus Data Services (now part of ISS Market Intelligence)

What it is: A long-standing provider that combines the FCA Register and FCA Directory data in one place and enriches it with email addresses, TPS information, Persons of Significant Control from Companies House, and assets-under-advice percentiles for investment advisers. Autus was acquired by ISS Market Intelligence in 2025.

Why you'd use it for prospecting: Historically the go-to for B2B financial services sales teams wanting a usable contact database of UK advisers and their decision-makers. The fact that they offer combined Register + Directory data in one place is a meaningful differentiator — the Directory (the individual adviser records certified or assessed by their firms) has thousands of people the Register alone doesn't surface.

Best for: Established B2B distribution teams at providers selling directly into the adviser channel and wanting curated, campaign-ready contact lists.

Trade-off: This is contact-list tooling, not market intelligence. Also a manual process where data is requested and then sent days later rather an a self serve platform. It's possible since the ISS acquisition, pricing and packaging are likely shifting — worth getting a current quote.

Price: Quoted on a case-by-case basis depending on number of data records and use case.

6. Unbiased, VouchedFor and adviser directory sites

What they are: Consumer-facing directories where advisers pay to be listed or earn inclusion through client reviews. Unbiased claims to list around 27,000 advisers, brokers and accountants. VouchedFor publishes an annual Top Rated Adviser guide based on client ratings.

Why they matter for prospecting: Useful for two narrow purposes: (1) identifying individual client-facing advisers who actively market themselves online, and (2) reading actual client feedback, which is otherwise hard to come by at scale.

Best for: Adviser-level rather than firm-level targeting. Understanding reputation and review volume. Secondary enrichment on firms you've already identified.

Trade-off: Self-selected. Absence of a listing means nothing — possible serious firms aren't on these directories at all. You cannot use them as a "complete list of IFAs" because they are not intended to be one. Not a B2B platform, no data exports or integrations to power sales or marketing.

Price: Browsing is free.

So what IFA or wealth manager databases should I actually buy?

It depends on what you're doing.

If you're building a generic mail-merge campaign, a B2B list vendor is the cheapest route and the data will be adequate for one-shot outreach.

But if your ICP is defined by commercial firm characteristics that don't live in the FCA Register, none of the above will get you there on their own. That's the gap we built Siorra to close.

Whatever you pick, one piece of advice that applies across every vendor on this list: insist on seeing the exact fields you'll receive, the refresh cadence, and the licence terms before you sign. The difference between a dataset you can act on and a dataset you paid for twice is almost always in the small print.