Morgan has publicly been criticising advisers and, as reported in Good Returns last week, joined the ranks of the Society Of Independent Financial Advisers (SIFA).

The essence of Morgan’s criticisms of the industry is that advisers hold themselves out to be independent when in fact they are receiving commissions from the financial service firms.

Such planners are not advisers at all, Morgan argues, but are commission salesmen, and he intends to raise the issue of this, and whether such advisers can call themselves independent, at the SIFA conference next month.

Morgan said that after the reaction to his public criticisms of the industry, the FPIA was “a hopeless cause”.

Matthews says that, in essence, Morgan is taking too hard a line.

“It is interesting that Gareth Morgan says you can't be a ‘financial adviser’ if you accept commissions as many of the SIFA members are almost certainly accepting some form of commissions,” he said.

He also says that the FPIA and SIFA are not competing organisations – the two exist for different reasons, have different objectives and many SIFA members are also members of the FPIA.

“For that reason it seems odd to say it was a choice between the two.”

And Matthews says that, “depending on your definition of independent, it is doubtful that the majority of SIFA members would be classified as truly independent.”