Disgruntled financial advisers have been complaining to the chief City regulator after one of the most popular search engines used by those hunting for an independent financial adviser (IFA) decided to merge the list of fee-only advisers with those who only accept commissions.

IFA Promotion, which runs the search engine, says it found it impossible to guarantee that IFAs who called themselves fee-only were what they claimed to be. It has now asked the Financial Services Authority to verify the number of fee-only firms and says it will happily reinstate its fee-only list once this has been done.