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Unbiased.co.uk announces its annual ‘Media IFA of the Year’ awards ceremony

• Ceremony will take place on the 16 February 2011 in London
• Expert judging panel will choose the winning IFAs and whole of market mortgage advisers in seven categories

Unbiased.co.uk, the professional advice website, today announces the details of its annual ‘Media IFA of the Year’ awards, sponsored by BlackRock and Standard Life.  The awards, now in their 7th year, will be held on the 16 February at a drinks party at Vanilla in London (131 Great Titchfield Street, London, W1W 5BB).

The awards, designed to recognise the work of individual IFAs and mortgage advisers in positioning the IFA and the whole of market advice sector as expert commentators within the media, will this year be split into the following categories:

• Best IFA individual
• Best IFA firm
• Best pensions IFA
• Best investment IFA
• Best whole of market mortgage adviser
• Best small or sole trader IFA
• Best newcomer

Unbiased.co.uk’s Media Services programme is now in its 14th year, and continues to put journalists in touch with IFAs who can provide expert commentary on a range of financial topics.  It enables journalists to always present the best financial advice proposition to their readers, listeners and viewers, and has resulted in over 4,300 online articles mentioning unbiased.co.uk Media Services IFAs in the past 12 months.  There are now over 160 media IFAs in unbiased.co.uk’s online media directory, the Bluebook.

BlackRock and Standard Life are the headline sponsors of the event and unbiased.co.uk is currently in the process of appointing individual sponsors for each of the awards categories.  For further information on sponsorship packages and costs, contact Fran Knight on 0207 833 3131 or fran@ifap.org.uk.

For this year’s awards, the judges will look at all members of the Bluebook and choose the winners based on their media work and commentaries.  The awards will judged by an expert panel of:

• Karen Barrett, Chief Executive of unbiased.co.uk
• Mark Elliott, Head of Sales at BlackRock
• Stephen Ingledew, Retail Distribution Director at Standard Life
• Paul McMillan, editor of Money Marketing
• Robert Thickett, editor of Mortgage Strategy
• Kim North, Tech and Tech
• As well as a representative of the award sponsors’ company in each relevant category

Karen Barrett, Chief Executive of unbiased.co.uk comments: “We know just how hard our media IFAs and mortgage advisers work every year to not only service their clients but to also promote the independent financial advice brand as a whole.  Our core focus remains in promoting the benefits of independent financial advice to the consumer and the media plays an important part in that.  The Media Services team, together with our media IFAs and mortgage advisers, tries to ensure journalists have access to independent and whole of market advisers to use as analysts and expert commentators for their quotes and interviews.

“Our annual ‘Media IFA of the Year’ award is a great way of getting journalists and the adviser community together, to celebrate the relationship between the two sectors.”

ENDS

Karen Barrett, Chief Executive, unbiased.co.uk: 020 7833 3131

Anna Schirmer/Anna Moulds/Emily Falla, Lansons Communications: 020 7294 3682

For expert commentary or case studies from over 150 media-friendly IFAs, journalists should visit www.unbiased.co.uk/bluebook.

About unbiased.co.uk, the professional advice website

The unbiased.co.uk portal is a free and confidential UK-wide search matching consumers with local professional advisers: ‘find an IFA’, ‘find a mortgage adviser’, and ‘find a solicitor’, and is currently inviting registrations for its ‘find an accountant’ service.  These searches enable consumers to find professional advisers by postcode, area of specialism, qualification and payment method. In 2009, unbiased.co.uk fulfilled half a million searches for local, professional advice. 

IFA Promotion, the organisation behind unbiased.co.uk, is now in its 21st year, and was set up to promote the benefits of independent financial advice to consumers.  IFAP is sponsored by the following companies:

Registered Office: unbiased.co.uk is the consumer brand of IFA Promotion Ltd, 90 St. Vincent Street, Glasgow G2 5UB. Registered in Scotland: No. 114606