How to change your financial adviser
Changing adviser is mainly a process problem: understand the existing arrangement, verify the replacement and avoid unnecessary disruption.
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Why might someone change adviser?
Common reasons include service quality, communication, specialist needs, changing circumstances, fees or simply wanting a different relationship. The right reason is the one that matters to your plan, not whether changing is common.
Before appointing the replacement
Keep your records
Retain suitability reports, policy information, statements and other key documents from previous advice. A new adviser may need historical information to understand why the existing plan was set up.
Do not make unnecessary product changes just to change adviser
Changing the professional relationship and changing investments are different decisions. Ask whether a product or platform transfer is genuinely required and what costs or consequences it creates.
Decide what is actually changing
Changing the person who advises you does not necessarily require moving every pension or investment. List the services involved: planning, ongoing advice, investment management, platform administration and product provision. Some can remain in place while the advisory relationship changes.
Ask a prospective adviser whether they can advise on your existing arrangements and what would make a transfer necessary. A new provider should follow from a reasoned assessment, not simply from the fact that you have changed advisers. Check separately for guarantees, exit charges or tax consequences before moving assets.
Request a written scope for the handover. It should identify who reviews the existing plan, who takes responsibility for upcoming decisions and which records are needed. Make clear whether the new firm is offering a second opinion, a replacement ongoing service or a particular project.
Create a clean handover record
Collect your latest plan, suitability reports, valuations, fee schedule, withdrawal instructions and any relevant tax records. Add a short list of unresolved actions and future dates. It is easy to lose a pending pension contribution or planned withdrawal between two firms when both assume the other is handling it.
Confirm the old service's notice period and the date charges stop. Confirm the new service's start date and whether any period of overlapping fees is intentional. If charges are deducted by a platform or provider, ask who tells that organisation and how you will verify that its records have changed.
For example, someone changing advisers during retirement may want the existing monthly withdrawal to continue unchanged while a new plan is prepared. The handover should state who monitors that payment and whether any investment authority is changing. Cancelling a relationship without mapping the underlying instructions can create avoidable confusion.
Keep switching and complaining separate
If the old service was poor, retain evidence before closing access to its portal. A request to stop future fees is not the same as a complaint about past work or a request for redress. Set out each request separately so the responses can be assessed.
Check the final statement for any charge after the agreed end date and query unexplained amounts promptly. Keep confirmation that the old authority has ended and that the new firm has received the relevant records.
The handover is complete when you know who is responsible, what you are paying and what happens next. A welcome email alone does not establish that provider records, investment permissions and outstanding tasks have all been transferred.
Sources and further reading
FCA - Financial Services Register ↗
MoneyHelper - Choosing a financial adviser ↗
