Independent or restricted: What's in a name?

It's safe to say the retail advice industry has come a long way since the major conflicts of interest that were exposed during the early 1980s. Back then the clear need for guardrails led successively to the Financial Services Act, Treating Customers Fairly (TCF), the Retail Distribution Review (RDR), Product Intervention and Product Governance (PROD) and lately Consumer Duty. Alongside these developments, firms identified themselves according to a duality set by the regulator: they are either ‘independent financial advisers' or ‘restricted advice firms'. These will be familiar terms for...