What are the best sources of UK IFA industry insights & market intelligence?

If you sell into the UK IFA channel - whether you're a platform or asset manager - or if you’re a PE-backed consolidator or corporate finance advisor looking to understand the market, then you already know the awkward truth about the IFA market: the data is everywhere and nowhere.

The FCA publishes the Register. Companies House streams filings. Trade press runs daily copy. Consultancies release annual benchmarks. VouchedFor aggregates adviser reviews. And yet when you sit down to answer a simple question - which advice firms in the North West have hired new advisers in the last 90 days and sit in the £100m–£500m AUM band? - there's no single place to go. You're stitching it together yourself, from ten tabs, a spreadsheet, and a LinkedIn search.

This piece is our attempt at an honest map of where the signal actually lives. We've put Siorra at the top because that's what Siorra is built to do - deliver leading edge market intelligence into the UK IFA and wealth management firms. And we'll explain exactly what the other sources do better, and where they stop.

Top 9 sources for finding IFA and wealth management industry market intelligence

1. Siorra

What it is: The intelligence layer of the UK IFA industry. Continuous AI-powered monitoring of every UK IFA firm - correlated into live intelligence you can act on.

Why it's here: Every other source in this list is a single pane of glass. The FCA Register tells you about permissions. Companies House tells you about filings. The trade press tells you what happened yesterday. None of them correlate across sources, and none of them turn raw data into actionable intelligence.

Siorra pulls from the FCA Register, Companies House streaming filings, firm websites and dozens of other sources to track the UK IFA and wealth management industry entirely. Signals are detected, timestamped, and stitched together over time, so when a firm changes its platform, loses three advisers in a quarter, or quietly updates its website to reference a new client segment, the pattern shows up. Siorra is also built exclusively around the financial advice space as a B2B data product, unlike other generalist FCA Register data companies that simply show every firm on the FCA register.

Best for: Asset manager distribution teams building a targeted outreach list. PE-backed consolidators screening acquisition targets by succession stage and AUM band. Platforms tracking net flows and adviser churn across the market.

Trade-off: It's a paid subscription, built for B2B customers with a commercial reason to deeply understand the IFA market. If you're a consumer or a sole-trader IFA looking for a weekly read, the options below will serve you better.

2. The FCA Financial Services Register (and the Register Extract Service)

What it is: The FCA Register is the regulator's authoritative record of every authorised firm, appointed representative, and approved individual in the UK. The public Register is free; a paid Register Extract Service delivers bulk data under licence.

Why it's here: This is the ground truth for who is authorised to do what. Every serious data product in this sector - including Siorra - builds on it. Firm status, permissions, controlled functions, appointed representative relationships, disciplinary history - it's all here.

Best for: Confirming regulatory status before onboarding, due diligence, and mapping AR networks to their principals.

Trade-off: It's a basic reference source, not a trend source. The Register tells you the state of the world today; it doesn't tell you what's changed or why, and it contains nothing about AUM, platform usage, client demographics, or commercial specialisms. You need to layer analysis on top of it - which is precisely the gap that vendors like Siorra exist to fill.

3. NextWealth

What it is: A specialist research and consultancy firm focused on UK wealth management and financial advice, founded by Heather Hopkins. Their flagship Financial Advice Business Benchmarks (FABB) report is now in its seventh year and is widely cited across the industry.

Why it's here: NextWealth publishes some of the sharpest survey-based research into how advice firms actually operate - pricing models, staffing ratios, tech stacks, client numbers, MPS proposition comparison, adviser fee benchmarking. The FABB report is free and has become something of an industry staple, with paraplanning firms reportedly citing it in recommendation reports.

Best for: Benchmarking your advice firm against peers. Understanding how pricing, outsourcing, and platform usage are shifting at the aggregate level.

Trade-off: Survey-based research is a snapshot of sentiment and behaviour - it's not firm-level intelligence. You get statistically robust aggregates (263 firms for the 2025 FABB report), but you can't use it to identify a specific firm or act on a specific change.

4. Citywire New Model Adviser

What it is: Citywire's flagship publication for UK financial planners, running the annual New Model Adviser Top 100, regional and national awards, and daily news coverage.

Why it's here: It's the closest thing the profession has to a newspaper of record. Strong on regulatory developments, M&A activity, people moves at consolidators and large firms, and MPS coverage. The Top 100 list is a useful, if necessarily incomplete, cross-section of the strongest firms in the market.

Best for: Staying current on who's moved where, which firms are being acquired, and what the large consolidators are doing. Regulatory news and enforcement.

Trade-off: Daily trade press is about events, not patterns. It's a great input for intelligence products but a weaker base for strategic decisions on its own.

5. Money Marketing and FTAdviser

What they are: The other two pillars of the UK adviser trade press. Money Marketing has been covering the sector since 1985; FTAdviser is the Financial Times' adviser-focused arm.

Why they're here: Between them they cover most of what Citywire doesn't, and vice versa - pensions policy, tax changes, protection, mortgages, and a broader sweep of the regulatory agenda. The overlap with Citywire is meaningful but not total; serious market-watchers read all three.

Best for: Cross-checking stories, catching policy and tax angles that the planning-focused publications sometimes underweight, and picking up early signals on what the FCA and Treasury are briefing.

Trade-off: Same as Citywire - great at events, weak at synthesis. You need to do the joining-up yourself.

6. PIMFA

What it is: The Personal Investment Management & Financial Advice Association - the trade body for UK wealth management, investment services, and financial advice firms.

Why it's here: PIMFA's quarterly industry statistics (on AUM, revenues, and flows across its member base) and its collaborative research with NextWealth, UK Finance, KPMG and others offer an institutional view of the sector's health. Their policy positioning is also a reliable early signal on where the industry is leaning on regulatory questions.

Best for: Aggregate sector health metrics, trade body positioning on FCA consultations, and a view of the PBWM (private banking and wealth management) end of the market.

Trade-off: Skews toward the larger wealth managers and institutional members. Less useful for understanding the long tail of smaller IFA firms that dominate the UK market by number.

7. The FCA's own publications (Financial Lives, thematic reviews, and Dear CEO letters)

What they are: Beyond the Register, the FCA publishes the Financial Lives survey (a nationally representative consumer survey - around 18,000 respondents in 2024), thematic reviews of specific practices, portfolio letters to firm categories, and enforcement notices.

Why they're here: These publications set the terms of the industry conversation. Consumer Duty, the Advice Guidance Boundary Review, and targeted support are not just regulatory initiatives - they're the lens through which distribution strategies, product design, and M&A valuations are being re-evaluated. If you want to know what the industry will be talking about in 12 months, read what the FCA is publishing now.

Best for: Strategic planning, anticipating regulatory change, understanding consumer behaviour at the population level.

Trade-off: Dense, long, and deliberately neutral in tone. Requires interpretation. And as with all regulator publications, it tells you what the regulator thinks matters - not necessarily what firms are doing in response.

8. Companies House (and the streaming API)

What it is: The UK's official register of companies, with a real-time streaming API for filings - accounts, director changes, confirmation statements, and charges.

Why it's here: Every limited-company IFA firm files accounts here, and most of the AUM-proxy signals used in the market (revenue, balance sheet, headcount) originate in these filings. It's the second pillar alongside the FCA Register, and - like the Register - it's both free and essential.

Best for: Financial health, ownership changes, director movements, and group structure.

Trade-off: Raw data, no interpretation. You need to know which filings matter, how to correlate them with FCA FRNs, and how to derive meaningful business metrics from statutory accounts that are often filed under small-company exemptions with very little detail.

9. VouchedFor and the professional bodies (CII/PFS, CISI)

What they are: VouchedFor is an adviser review and directory platform, best known for its annual Top Rated Adviser guide. The Chartered Insurance Institute and its Personal Finance Society arm (along with CISI) publish qualification data, CPD activity, and practitioner surveys.

Why they're here: This is where you find the adviser-level view - individual reputations, qualifications held, client feedback, and where the profession is heading on competency and ethics. It's also the most honest mirror the industry has for client sentiment below the aggregate level.

Best for: Due diligence on individual advisers, spotting firms with unusually strong (or weak) client satisfaction, and tracking the professional body agenda.

Trade-off: Self-selected data. Firms and individuals opt in; absence of a profile means nothing. VouchedFor in particular has selection bias toward advisers who actively seek reviews.

So which one should you actually use?

Honest answer: most of them, most of the time, in combination. None of them individually will tell you which firm to call this week if you’re a distribution team with targets to hit or an event to fill, nor will they help a PE firm find the next bolt on.

That's the gap Siorra was built to close. We don't replace these sources - we correlate them. If your job depends on knowing the UK IFA industry in operational detail rather than at the aggregate level, we can help. Get in touch.