FASA 2025
Special Awards

Company of the Year

This year, the Financial Adviser Service Awards' Company of the Year goes to Just.

Over the past 20 years, Just (and its previous incarnation as Just Retirement) has repeatedly received five-star ratings in the Pensions and Protection category.

That is 20 consecutive years of delivering top-flight service to advisers and their clients, through the 2008 financial crisis; through the Retail Distribution Review; through the sweeping changes to pensions brought about in the 2014 Budget by the former chancellor George Osborne; and right up to Covid and beyond.

As we enter a new phase for pensions, with current chancellor Rachel Reeves making changes to the way in which pensions are taxed on inheritance, advisers and their clients will continue to need the sort of five-star support that companies such as Just deliver year in, year out.

In the Mortgages category, Just has also been delivering five-star service every year since 2007 except two, when advisers voted it worthy of four-star service. This means it has racked up 16 years of five-star service to advisers and their clients across the UK for mortgages. This is a considerable achievement.

As Tom Evans, managing director, retail, says in Just's company profile: "We’ve a strong social purpose, providing products and services to help our customers, and we believe financial intermediaries are best placed to help people with the choices they need to achieve a better later life."

It is with great pleasure, then, that on behalf of the thousands of advisers who voted in the Financial Adviser Service Awards 2025, FT Adviser is awarding Just 'Company of the Year 2025'.

Simoney Kyriakou is editor of FT Adviser

Outstanding Achievement

For 35 years, FT Adviser readers have been voting in their thousands across a variety of metrics, to decide which companies have delivered the best of the best when it comes to service.

But even then, some companies just seem to have gone over and above, year after year, to make sure advisers and their clients are exceptionally well looked after.

The Outstanding Achievement award goes to the company that blew readers away, as evidenced by its high scores in each category, as well as by the consistency of the service.

This year, Halifax Intermediaries achieved this prestigious accolade — with more than 1,000 individual votes from FT Adviser readers.

It is the first time in many years that a pure mortgage lender has won this award, but it is not the first time Halifax has achieved a five-star status.

The lender has been in our service awards since 1995 and, with the exception of a couple of years when it achieved a 3-star ranking, has otherwise consistently delivered four and five star service for more than 30 years.

In fact, in the past 14 years, Halifax Intermediaries has been awarded five stars every year, showcasing the value advisers put on the lender's quality of service to them and their clients.

Editor’s Choice

FT Adviser is privileged to be able to witness the rise and fall of companies throughout the year.

Our inboxes are full of emails from readers who are either praising companies or pointing out failures, and one only has to read the comments sections on FT Adviser stories to see how advisers react to news about financial services providers.

It is also why the editor gets to choose a company that, in the editor's estimation, has made a significant difference over the past year — whether to improve its proposition, implement new training, hire more business development managers or augment its technology to help advisers and their clients.

Based on the scores collated by thousands of advisers who voted this year, Fundment is the Editor's Choice for 2025.

For the past three years, the platform has delivered five-star service to advisers, with some of the highest scores ever seen in this category.

When it started up in 2022, it decided it would let advisers set different fees for individual clients and accounts, and this sense of flexibility and adaptability towards advisers has continued.

In January the platform announced it had raised £45mn — which it invested in expanding its team and scaling its adviser technology to help advisers.

This year, in addition to growing its business, Fundment has hosted several conferences and panel sessions for advisers at its London office, such as the recent Advisory AI half-day conference.

Its dedication to service has certainly resonated with readers, which is why Fundment deserves to be this year's Editor's Choice.

Readers' Choice

If it is unusual to have two newcomers (see Best Newcomer further down), FT Adviser has never had two Readers' Choice recipients, but this year both Royal London and PensionLab deserve to be given this accolade.

Pension Lab — Technology

This year, Pension Lab joined forces with FT Adviser and several companies across UK financial services to put an end to the tiresome letters of authority processes that have been the bane of advisers' lives for many years.

Pension Lab worked tirelessly to create a voluntary set of standards and campaigning to encourage providers and advisers to sign up to these. This has had a considerable impact on readers, who cited the importance of the Fixing Letters of Authority Action Group and its vital campaign.

One wrote to FT Adviser, saying: "I'm sure I speak for many when I say this is wholeheartedly welcomed."

And its half-year survey showed providers had cut response times for letters of authority, with two improving by 33 per cent — a significant improvement on 2024.

This is why in a category that is notoriously difficult to achieve a five-star rating for advisers — who are very particular about the technology they use — Pension Lab burst into the rankings with a coveted five stars and high numbers of individual adviser votes.

Royal London — Pensions and Protection

Royal London has been in the pensions part of the Pensions and Protection category since 1993, and as it has grown over the years, so too have its rankings — consistently delivering a five-star service to advisers since 2008.

This means that, despite the financial crisis, despite the upheaval of RDR and the changes to pensions, Covid, Brexit, the disastrous "mini-Budget" of 2022 and everything that has happened between 2008 and now, Royal London's commitment to delivering great service to advisers has not wavered.

Over those years, FT Adviser readers have voted with their pens against some of the other life and pension giants; Royal London's votes have remained constant.

In the protection part of the category, Royal London has also gained the coveted five stars consecutively since 2013.

But it's not just the figures — the comments that advisers provided to FT Adviser to back up their high scores demonstrate how Royal London not only seeks to do the right thing, but also puts things right when things go wrong.

Readers wrote: "I consistently rate Royal London highly due to their exceptional commitment to service, adviser support, and client outcomes. Across every stage of the protection journey — from new business processing to legacy policy handling.

"Their professionalism, responsiveness, and clarity stand out. Royal London takes a truly adviser-focused approach, offering flexible remuneration options, excellent technical support, and transparent communication."

Advisers said the systems were "intuitive and efficient, and their teams are approachable, knowledgeable, and always willing to go the extra mile".

This combination of personal service, operational efficiency and commitment to long-term relationships makes Royal London a deserved recipient of the 2025 Readers' Choice award.

Best Newcomer

It is not often that new providers make such an impact in the UK advisory world that they make it into the Financial Adviser Service Awards rankings, but this time we welcome two to the fold.

Discretionary Fund Manager

Magnus Financial Discretionary Fund Management is a relative newcomer to the market, having started in 2020, when it traded under the name of MFDM LLP.

MFDM was acquired by Wren Sterling in 2022 and after a series of hires, and a rebrand in 2023 to Magnus, the company achieved its first £1bn in client assets under management in 2024.

It has burst onto advisers' radar, coming into the rankings with a prestigious five stars — well done, Magnus!

Mortgage Provider

In the mortgage category, Gen H takes home the accolade of Best Newcomer 2025.

The company has been around since 2019, starting out as a fintech mortgage lender.

But over the years it has expanded its offering, developing services, such as Gen H for intermediaries, and significantly boosting the number of mortgage brokers using its services, at a time when many traditional lenders were using antiquated and laborious processes.

In 2023, Gen H created Gen H Legal, its conveyancing arm, widely available to all direct customers and their entire intermediary panel of more than 11,000 brokers across England and Wales.

Its products are now widely available online and through select clubs and networks such as the Legal & General Mortgage Club, Primis, TMA Club and Simplybiz — making it a go-to choice for FT Adviser readers.

So while it's not brand new to the mortgage market, we believe Gen H's entry into the Financial Adviser Service Awards rankings with a coveted five stars definitely deserves a mention.