Sector guide · Financial advisers

What a financial adviser’s website should show, and how to make it checkable.

The FCA’s rules on complaints, charges and compensation information, set apart from what our review of eight advice firms’ pages found, with a checklist.

By Stacey Smith··Sources fetched 28 September 2026

Someone choosing a financial adviser, and an AI assistant answering for them, want to know who the firm is, whether it is authorised, what advice will cost and what happens if something goes wrong. This guide sets out what the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) rules say, apart from what we found on advice firms’ pages. Whether a rule applies to your firm is for your compliance function.

The register and your firm reference number

FCA pages on the register, and the 2002 Regulations

The FCA describes its Financial Services Register as the public record of firms and individuals, showing whether a firm is authorised and what it is allowed to offer. It tells consumers to deal only with authorised or registered firms, and that not every individual at a firm needs approval, so some will not appear.

Separately, regulation 6 of the Electronic Commerce Regulations 2002 requires a person providing an “information society service” to make certain information “easily, directly and permanently accessible”, including, where they are “registered in a trade or similar register available to the public”, the register and their registration number, and, where the service “is subject to an authorisation scheme”, “the particulars of the relevant supervisory authority”.

The FCA’s statutory status wording, “Authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority”, is required by GEN 4.3 in letters and their electronic equivalents to retail clients; that rule is about letters, not web pages.

None of these sources requires a link to your own register entry. Linking your firm reference number to it is our advice: it saves a reader the search.

Fees and charges

COBS 6.1A.17R

“A firm must disclose its charging structure to a retail client in writing, in good time before making the personal recommendation.” COBS 6.1A also says a firm must not use a charging structure that conceals the amount or purpose of its adviser charges.

That is a duty to the client before advice, not a rule about websites. A fees page setting out the same structure, with worked examples in pounds, is our advice.

The Financial Ombudsman Service and the FSCS

DISP 1.2.1R and COBS 6.1.16R

DISP 1.2.1R requires firms to give information about the Financial Ombudsman Service, “including the Financial Ombudsman Service’s website address”, “on the respondent’s website, where one exists”. It separately requires firms to “publish appropriate information regarding their internal procedures” for handling complaints. The ombudsman says a business usually has up to 8 weeks to consider a complaint first, and that its service is free.

COBS 6.1 applies to designated investment business for retail clients other than MiFID, equivalent third country, optional exemption and insurance distribution business. Within it, COBS 6.1.16R requires a participant firm to make available information identifying the compensation scheme, including the amount and scope of its cover, in a durable medium or via a website if the website conditions are met. The FSCS says it may pay compensation where an adviser has gone out of business, up to a limit per eligible person, per firm, for bad pension advice.

The ombudsman information rule is about your website as a whole. The FSCS rule is about information made available to clients; it does not prescribe a web page. If you do describe FSCS cover on your site, take the limit and scope from the FSCS’s own pages.

What we checked

In our review of eight financial advice firms’ pages in Leeds and Manchester, captured on 27 September 2026, we read the page the search returned and, where linked, its fees page. We recorded what the pages showed; we did not check the register or assess any firm’s compliance.

What our review found

Seven of the eight showed their own FCA firm reference number and none linked to their own register entry. Three named an adviser and four gave a figure for an advice fee.

Five told a reader how to complain or named the Financial Ombudsman Service (three named it). None named the FSCS in the page text, and none carried a visible date.

A checklist you can apply

Open your home page, your advice page and your fees page. Items marked “rule” restate a requirement quoted above; items marked “our advice” go further than the rules. The tick boxes are only a reading aid and save nothing.

  • Show both in words, naming the FCA; check with your compliance function what the 2002 Regulations require of your site. our advice
  • Link the number to your own entry on the Financial Services Register, and link advisers to theirs where they appear. our advice
  • Name who would advise, not only the firm. our advice
  • Set out initial and ongoing charges, what each covers and a worked example in pounds. our advice
  • Give information about it, with its website address, on your website. rule
  • Put your complaints information on the site as well as publishing it. our advice
  • If you mention the FSCS, quote its current limit and scope from its own pages, and check whether COBS 6.1.16R applies to your business. our advice
  • Show when the page was last reviewed and who approved it. our advice
Download the review’s 10-question worksheet (CSV)Request a free visibility check

Sources

Each source was fetched on 28 September 2026; the requirements above are taken from these pages as they read that day. Rules change, so check the current version before relying on this guide.

This guide is a content aid, not legal or regulatory advice. It separates what the rules say from what our review found; where it recommends something the rules do not require, it says so. Have the responsible person at your firm approve any change to regulated information before it goes live. Send corrections, with the passage, to hello@answari.co.uk.