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In my blog last month I tried to brew up a storm with my suggestion that neither the public nor the regulator understood the difference between independent financial advice and independent financial sales.

This is really important debate for two reasons. Firstly, consumers often have an expectation of independent financial advice when they go for independent financial sales. Secondly, the way each of these should be regulated needs to be quite different. For some reason, independent product salespeople get quite defensive when you suggest that they are not really independent financial advisers. I wasn’t saying that there was anything wrong with this model but there are clear differences between the two. And this month I want to be controversial again. Why do so many IFAs shy away from t...

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