White Label Online Content (Toolkit One)

IFA Promotion is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to promoting the benefits of independent financial advice, and how to find it, to consumers. Unbiased.co.uk is its consumer brand and website where we provide an easy-to-use online ‘Find An IFA’ search for people looking for the best kind of advice possible. It is the is the most accurate and comprehensive search of its kind currently available to consumers, and is frequently referred to by third-party organisations such as industry regulator the FSA, Citizens Advice and frequently in all aspects of the media for its confidential and impartial advice. In the last 12 months it has been used over 575,000 times.

We also provide online content for a variety of websites from BBC Online, Guardian Unlimited, Telegraph.co.uk and Times Online to MSN and Yahoo – please see below for the range of content we could provide for your site.

All of the initiatives and resources mentioned below are available in a generic format and we would encourage you to select the most appropriate content from our menu. To enable you to do this easily we have outlined a list of steps it would be best to follow to promote the benefits of independent financial advice to readers of your website.

Step One: As a first step we encourage websites to put a ‘Find an IFA’ white label search onto their website.

White Label – ‘Find An IFA’ search facility
Unbiased.co.uk’s ‘Find An IFA’ search is currently run on 62 different sites including Times Online, Telegraph.co.uk, ThisisMoney, Guardian Unlimited, Yahoo, MSN, Tiscali, AOL, Norwich Union, LondonStockExchange.com and NS&I. This growing list of portals that host the search proves the value they recognise in the search and the important offering it provides for readers.
These sites use the search for a number of reasons:

• Its reliability
• Its ease-of-use for consumers
• It adds value to the site’s existing editorial content and can act as a consumer ‘call to action’

The search enables consumers to identify IFAs in their vicinity i.e. within their nearest postal area or make a more detailed search by specifying areas of expertise, qualifications or preferred payment options. The search is both confidential and hygienic - the consumer is not required to provide their personal details and the decision whether to proceed and contact the local IFAs they have identified rests firmly in their hands. The result is that Unbiased.co.uk has dealt with over 575,000 enquiries in the last 12 months.

Example:

This white label of our search can be built specifically for you and look like your tool with combined branding. It is an extremely useful tool to offer your visitors and shows that your site is supporting the gold standard of financial advice: independent financial advice.

It can also act as a useful tool to you, the journalist, as a ‘call to action’, at the end of your editorial so that readers can find a local IFA on your site – and therefore don’t need to leave your URL and go elsewhere. You can get a ‘Find An IFA’ search white label for your own site very simply by supplying us with the html code for a page, we can then build the white label for you from this. This typically takes two weeks to turn around.

Step Two: Dedicated Microsites

Once your readers are able to access independent financial advice via a confidential and hygienic search, Unbiased.co.uk has also designed a number of specific campaign microsites to educate consumers about financial advice.

These microsites have been adopted by sites such as MSN, AOL and Londonstockexchange.com, covering:

• tax - www.unbiased.co.uk/taketaxaction/
• pensions - www.unbiased.co.uk/takepensionaction/
• savings - www.unbiased.co.uk/getsaving

We also have a generic ‘getting advice’ site at www.unbiased.co.uk/beadvised.

All these sites carry content which is designed to provide information for consumers on specific subjects such as top ten tax tips, the unnecessary money you waste in taxes, new pension rules and how they affect you plus how to improve your savings habits and budget better. You could either just use some of the copy to supplement your own sections, which sites such as Yahoo do, or take a white label of the entire microsite that we can build and update for you.

Step Three: Online Tools

We have developed a number of online tools and interactive functionality which users love and we would be happy to white label for you just as we do for Guardian Unlimited, Thisismoney and a number of other sites. The tools focus on a variety of different personal finance issues and can help individuals, couples or a family plan their finances.

Our budget planner is a good example of a simple tool that allows consumers to start thinking about managing their personal finances and our protection tool enables consumers to look at how to deal with the things in life do not go according to plan. We have also just launched a new Financial Age Tool which offers consumers a fun, yet easy way to identify how mature their personal finances actually are, offering help and advice on ways to improve them.

Guardian Unlimited, Thisismoney, AOL and a number of other sites have already added white-label versions of these tools to their sites to create further content around the topic of independent financial advice and to link back to the Find an IFA search.

We are constantly looking to expand the tools we have and will keep you updated on what more we have to offer as and when they are completed.

Step Four: Podcasts

We have started utilising audio content and created a series of podcasts, giving advice on a range of financial products. They have been recorded by a various Independent Financial Advisers who specialise in each particular area, in an interview style, giving consumers simple and straightforward advice on topics such as financial advice, pensions, mortgages, tax planning, ethical investments, savings and equity release, with further podcast on other topics in the pipeline. Londonstockexchange.com recently added our podcasts to their site and we are happy to white label this content use on your website.

Please do get in touch to discuss how we could help you with quality online content and provide a white label of our consumer friendly ‘Find An IFA’ search which covers at least 95% of the 9000 plus IFAs in the UK. Simply contact David (07803 603659) on ifap@ifap.org.uk, or speak to our PR agency Lansons Communications on ifap@lansons.com (020 7294 3682) or digital agency i-Level celine.mcelwee@i-level.com (0207 399 7100) and one of the team will get back to you.