A rate rise built on a shrinking base
The uphold rate for decisions against Financial adviser / IFA firms rose by 8.4 percentage points in Veste's most recent 90-day window compared with the window before it, moving from 15.1% to 23.5%. On its own, that looks like a meaningful shift. But it happened while the number of published decisions in the category fell sharply, from 357 in the prior window to 181 in the current one, a drop of 176 decisions, or 49.3%. Both windows meet Veste's minimum sample threshold of 30 decisions, so the comparison is not statistically meaningless, but a near-halving of volume alongside a rate change of this size is exactly the kind of pattern that deserves scrutiny rather than a headline.
The uphold rate used throughout this analysis follows Veste's standard definition: (upheld decisions plus half of partially upheld decisions) divided by total decisions. That formula means a category can see its rate move even where the underlying mix of upheld, partially upheld and not upheld decisions has not changed dramatically, simply because the proportions shift with a smaller denominator.
The headline numbers
Across the full period Veste holds data for this category, from 3 April 2013 to 15 June 2026, there have been 12,544 decisions against Financial adviser / IFA firms. Of these, 5,330 were upheld, 984 were partially upheld and 6,230 were not upheld, giving an overall uphold rate of 46.4%. That is well above the corpus-wide baseline uphold rate of 28.8% across all 401,818 decisions with a recorded outcome in Veste's dataset, indicating that, over its full history, this category has tended to see complaints upheld more often than the average across all firm types and products combined.
That long-run average, however, sits a long way from where the category has been most recently. The rate found in the latest 90-day window, 23.5%, is roughly half the all-time average of 46.4%, and the prior window's rate of 15.1% was lower still.
What the monthly series shows
Veste's monthly trend data runs for 25 months, from June 2024 to June 2026. It tells a clearer story than the two-window comparison alone.
Through much of 2024 and into early 2025, monthly uphold rates for the category sat mostly in a band between around 30% and 47%. June 2024 opened the series at 32.9% on 35 decisions. Rates moved around, hitting 44.8% in July 2024, dipping to 29.8% in September 2024, and rising to 47.4% in October 2024. Into 2025, the pattern continued in a broadly similar range: 41.7% in January, 46.3% in February, and 43.8% in March, though the March figure came on a larger 65 decisions.
From mid-2025 the rate began drifting downward, with July 2025 recording 28.6% and September 2025 recording 37.5% on 64 decisions. Then came the sharpest move in the series. December 2025 recorded an uphold rate of 21.5% on 65 decisions. January 2026 fell further to 15.6% on 109 decisions, and February 2026 recorded the lowest rate in the entire 25-month series, 9.6%, on the highest monthly volume shown, 130 decisions. March 2026 saw volume rise again to 180 decisions, the largest in the series, with the rate recovering slightly to 18.6%.
After that spike in volume, the following three months show both volume and the rate moving differently. April 2026 recorded 30 decisions at a 33.3% uphold rate, May 2026 recorded 38 decisions at 25%, and June 2026, the final and most recent month in the series, recorded just 24 decisions at 20.8%, the lowest monthly volume of the entire period.
Set against this monthly detail, the period comparison looks less like an isolated rise and more like a partial rebound from an unusually low trough. The prior 90-day window's rate of 15.1% sits close to the depressed rates seen in January and February 2026, while the current window's 23.5% sits closer to the April to June 2026 range. The rise the story highlights may therefore reflect the tail end of a period of exceptionally low uphold rates easing back towards, though still well below, the category's longer-run norm.
The annual picture
Veste's year-on-year figures reinforce the sense of a downward multi-year trend rather than a single recent event. In 2022, the category recorded 974 decisions at an uphold rate of 47.7%. In 2023, volume rose to 1,210 decisions with the rate at 52.6%, the highest of the five years shown. From there the rate has fallen in every subsequent year for which Veste holds a full year: 44% across 731 decisions in 2024, 36.3% across 543 decisions in 2025, and, for the partial year 2026 so far, 17.1% across 511 decisions. Each of these years meets Veste's minimum sample threshold.
This five-year run shows a category whose uphold rate has fallen consistently since 2023, alongside declining annual decision volume, well before the 90-day comparison at the centre of this story. The 8.4 percentage point rise in the most recent quarter has to be read against that backdrop: it is a small uptick within a longer decline, not a reversal of it.
Firm mix: wide variation beneath the category average
The Financial adviser / IFA category is not one firm but many, and Veste's data shows just how much uphold rates vary between the largest contributors. Firms are counted here by the name recorded on each decision, so subsidiaries of the same banking or advisory group appear separately and are not combined into a single parent figure.
Among firms meeting the minimum sample size, Clydesdale Financial Services Limited accounts for the largest number of decisions in the dataset, 1,925, with an uphold rate of 17.3%, the lowest among the ten firms shown. At the other end, Portal Financial Services LLP recorded 218 decisions with an uphold rate of 92.9%, and The Mortgage Matters Partnership recorded 250 decisions at 76.8%. Between these extremes sit firms such as Sesame Limited (474 decisions, 42.7% uphold rate), Openwork Limited (333 decisions, 30.3%), Countrywide Principal Services Limited (264 decisions, 30.7%), Countrywide Assured Plc (196 decisions, 30.9%), TenetConnect Limited (154 decisions, 63.3%), Personal Touch Financial Services Ltd (148 decisions, 31.8%) and Lighthouse Advisory Services Limited (144 decisions, 61.8%).
This spread illustrates why category-level figures need careful interpretation. A category average sitting at 46.4% over its full history conceals firms ranging from below 20% to above 90%. Movements in the category's overall rate, including the 8.4 point rise examined here, could in principle be driven by changes in which firms are contributing decisions in a given window, changes in the mix of complaint types being decided, or genuine shifts in how individual firms' cases are being resolved. Veste's supplied data does not break down which firms sat within the current versus prior 90-day windows, so it is not possible to say from this evidence alone which of these factors, if any, is responsible.
Complaint types associated with the category
Veste's related claim-type data shows some of the issues most commonly linked to financial advice complaints. Pension transfer advice, the related category with the highest uphold rate shown, recorded 2,718 decisions at 68.3%. Investment mis-selling recorded 2,515 decisions at 59.6%. General financial advice recorded 936 decisions at 44.6%, close to the Financial adviser / IFA category's own 46.4% long-run average. Mortgage advice complaints, by contrast, recorded 845 decisions at a considerably lower 23.8%, closer to the depressed rates seen in the category's most recent months.
These figures describe outcomes for complaint types generally, not decisions confined to Financial adviser / IFA firms specifically, but they give a sense of where uphold rates tend to run higher or lower within the broader advice-related landscape that this firm-type category sits within.
Individual decisions as illustration
Veste's example decisions from June 2026, drawn from firms in this space, show the range of circumstances that reach the Ombudsman. In one case, DRN-6428320, a complaint that Quilter Mortgage Planning Limited had mis-sold income protection insurance was not upheld; the ombudsman found the policies suitable and that a determining factor in a later claim being stopped was the complainant's own decision to take pension payments earlier than his stated intended retirement age.
In DRN-6309068, a complaint against Quilter Financial Services Limited concerning a missed annual pension review was partially upheld, with the ombudsman finding in the complainant's favour for a missed October 2020 review but ruling that a related claim about an earlier 2018 review fell outside the six-year jurisdiction limit under DISP 2.8.2R.
In DRN-6340655, a complaint that HL Partnership Limited gave unsuitable advice on a £1,600,000 bridging loan was not upheld. The ombudsman found the advice suitable for the complainant's circumstances, given that alternative financing options would have been unaffordable on her pension income.
In DRN-6298755, a complaint that Quilter Financial Limited gave unsuitable pension transfer advice, involving the loss of a guaranteed annual income of £10,200 from a Section 32 pension, was not upheld. The ombudsman found the complainant had other guaranteed pension income, including his own and his wife's defined benefit and state pensions, totalling over £31,000 per year, sufficient to meet retirement needs without reliance on the transferred benefit.
These four decisions are illustrations of the kinds of cases reaching the Ombudsman in this category during the most recent month of data. They are not a representative sample of the 24 decisions recorded for June 2026, nor evidence of a trend on their own.
What this data does and does not show
The supplied evidence demonstrates a rate rise of 8.4 percentage points between two 90-day windows, occurring alongside a substantial fall in decision volume. It also demonstrates that this rise sits within a longer run of monthly and annual data showing declining uphold rates and declining volume since at least 2023, and that the current window's rate of 23.5% remains far below the category's long-run average of 46.4%. It does not demonstrate why the rate has moved, since the data does not identify which firms or complaint types made up each window, nor does it establish anything about the conduct of any individual firm. Published Ombudsman decisions are also not the same population as all complaints made to firms in this category, since many complaints are resolved before reaching a published decision.
Conclusion
Taken together, the data points to a category where volume has been falling for some time and where the uphold rate fell even faster through late 2025 and early 2026 before partially recovering in the most recent quarter. Readers should treat the 8.4 point rise as a modest rebound within a longer downward trend rather than a standalone development, and should be cautious about drawing conclusions about any single firm from a category-level figure, given how widely uphold rates vary between the ten largest firms in this dataset.
For further detail, see Financial adviser / IFA statistics and All Financial Ombudsman statistics.