We first reported on True Potential Wealth Management in 2023 when we recognised changes taking place in how they were able to attract formerly independent financial advisers to their restricted service model.

Restricted financial advisers should not call themselves IFA’s as they are not independent (that is what the ‘I’ n IFA stands for). Most financial advisers today operate under a restricted adviser model, most via St James’s Place the second largest being True Potential and recently joined by Quilter’s Wealth Management arm.

The True Potential offering is by no means bad one. Their platform has always been driven by technology with fantastic features such as passive saving and they offered online portals and web-applications for tracking your pensions and investments long before a lot of their peers.

However, TP’s growth in terms of assets under management (the amount of money invested in pensions and investments via their investment platform) has been exponential in spite of many of the general public having never heard of them.

This comes down to how they attracted so clients and has now led to True Potential setting aside £100 million to make financial redress to clients.

So, why has this happened?

How True Potential Grew So Quickly

Since 2005, True Potential has grown into one of the UK’s biggest wealth managers. A large part of this growth came from taking on clients from existing independent financial advisers.

To encourage advisers to join them, True Potential offered a very generous deal.

Advisers who moved their clients’ pensions and investments onto the True Potential platform were paid up to 8% of the value transferred.

For example, if an adviser convinced a client to move £100,000 of their pension into True Potential, the adviser could be paid £8,000 by True Potential.

However, a key point in this was that it only applied to the clients who chose to move to True Potential’s direct offer and where the adviser surrendered the client to be managed by True Potentials central team moving forwards.

Many advisers were not keen to join True Potential in spite of the huge financial incentives, primarily because they did not want to become a tied agent of True Potential and they did not believe the True Potential (TP) offering was as good or better than what their clienst already had, most objecting the charges (usually much higher) for using TP, lack of product options such as investment bonds and poor performance comparisons when compared to their existing client portfolios.

However, in spite of some adviser reservations, between 2019 and 2023, hundreds of millions of pounds of pensions and ISAs were transferred to TP under their Direct Offer Proposition.

What is Direct Offer?

Direct Offer exists for clients who either do not want or do not require financial advice. |
Every time you buy an insurance policy you effectively choose the product and make your own decisions on the level of cover, excess fees etc. This is direct offer and it can be used for all manner of financial services products where appropriate.

When advisers joined TP between 2019 and 2023 they were able to steer clients towards TP offering without advising them to transfer their pensions. This was presented for several different reasons depending on the adviser such as:

• They were retiring and wanted to make sure the client went to safe home
• The TP offering had better technology
• They had limited resources, and the client would benefit from access to a central team available between 8am and 10pm Monday to Friday

However rarely did they mention:

• They would be paid 8% of the funds transferred, almost 4 times the market average for selling clients (see our St James’s Place article on Selling Clients
• That the platform & fund management charges were often significantly higher
• That the overall historic performance with TP, compared to where they were transferring from could actually be worse

Using Direct Offer also mean that the adviser could:

• Avoid having to justify the transfer even if it made the client worse off

Why did the FCA Step In?

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) became aware that clients were not being properly advised before moving their money. In many cases, clients were told they were signing up on a “direct offer” basis (no advice) when in reality an adviser had been heavily involved in the transfer.

The FCA forced True Potential to undergo a Section 166 review (an in-depth investigation) into how these transfers were carried out and whether clients were treated fairly.

What Has Changed at TP?

In late 2023, True Potential stopped paying advisers the 8% incentive moving to paying advisers based on the ongoing fees they generate, and only after they have stayed with the firm for two years.

However it was announced in September 2025 that they would now be offering 6% to their advisers on the assets who they ‘advised’ to move to TP after 2 years, which when considering the fact advisers could still charge a 1% fee for advising the client to move to True Potential and the 2 years fees at 0.5% plus 6% on surrendering the client to TP central office for ongoing management, makes 8%.

So, what has changed, how does this new offer reduce conflicts of interest and stop advisers from encouraging clients to transfer simply because of the large payments on offer.

The only key difference we can see is that now all clients must be advised to move to True Potential, they cannot be moved via Direct Offer and that is a key driver.

We have witnessed situations in the past where a client (Mr H) had their pension invested in a passive fund with total charges of only 0.3%. When moved to TP via Direct Offer their total pension costs went up to 1.19% which is a 0.8% increase per annum.

This may not sound like lot, but a 0.8% charge on a £100,000 pension over 20 years can still cost a whopping £37,634.

Does insisting clients receive advice model mean clients can’t be worse off?

The honest answer is sometimes. Under the TP advice guidelines, it is very unlikely the client mentioned above (Mr H) would have been advised to transfer his pension and would therefore not be seeking redress.

We spoke off the record to an existing adviser of True Potential who confirmed that True Potential will still allow advisers to bring clients into their proposition where costs are going to increase provided there is justification for the transfer, however there are limits to what their compliance department will allow. He commented that,

“Generally speaking, an increase in charges of 0.6% per annum (which would still mean increased costs of £28,732 on the above calculations of £100k over 20 years) will be authorised without any difficulty.

An increase of 0.75% can still also be pushed through compliance under certain circumstances (£35,439 on the above calculations of £100k over 20 years).”

This suggests that clients certainly have more protection but the TP need to provide additional benefit such as encouraging increased passive saving, regular reviews and ideally stronger investment performance just to justify the advice to move to them.

Want to see how we calculated the above Financial Adviser Claims, try our free Financial Adviser Claim Calculator to see what compensation or redress you could be eligible for.

Why have TP put £100 Million Aside?

True Potential has admitted that in some cases, clients were not given enough information about what they were transferring into. The £100 million provision is there to pay compensation to clients who may have suffered financial losses after being moved to True Potential’s platform and funds.

What Does This Mean for Clients?

• You may be contacted by True Potential if you are eligible for compensation.
• TP (like St James’s Place) have advised clients they do not need to use a claims company to receive any payment, although many clients still prefer to take advice to check whether the offer is fair.
  *This is particularly important if you have transferred from existing schemes (as the majority have), in order to establish your true losses.
• If you are unhappy with how your pension or investments were moved, you can also complain directly to True Potential. If your complaint is rejected, you can escalate it to the Financial Ombudsman Service for an impartial opinion.
• If you are unhappy with the outcome other options include legal action through the courts.

For all the above matters, if you lack the time, inclination or are simply not comfortable in pursuing a complaint against True Potential, then as regulated solicitors, we are prepared to investigate the matter fully, on your behalf, on a no-win no-fee basis.

Our View

Claim My Loss is a trading style of HT Legal who specialise in claims involving financial advisers, pensions and investments.

In our view, the TP offering is perfect for some clients but probably not ideal for some of the clients who may have been shoehorned into the TP eco system for their financial adviser’s financial gain.

There is also the question over whether the financial incentive the financial adviser stood to receive should have been more clearly disclosed. This has been packaged as a client asset sale as opposed to a commission.

If as many clients were affected as with vehicle finance claims which involve discretionary commissions then it is likely the matter could be brought before the supreme court, however we believe that most affected clients will be able to get the compensation or Financial Redress they deserve via Direct Complaint the Financial Ombudsman or through direct legal action if required.

As with most Financial Adviser Claims most UK investors don’t even realise, they may have grounds for complaint. Often pensions and investments have still gone up in value, but when compared with where the money came from, clients may still have lost out significantly.

That’s why we built our Financial Adviser Redress Calculator. It helps you work out whether you may be owed compensation, even if your investments have grown.

If you have moved a pension or investment to True Potential or were convinced to transfer any pensions or investments and want to know if you could be due compensation, use our Financial Adviser Redress Calculator today or book a free consultation with one of our experts.