Abstract

The UK's personal financial services sector has been the site of controversy over alleged professional malpractice. Financial advisers’ status as professionals is in question, and their claim to knowledge and expertise is apparently challenged by an extensive consumer literature on personal finance. This article analyses a corpus of seventeen consumer guides to personal finance and money management published in the UK, together with a range of financial material available on the internet. These guides urge readers to give high priority to their finances, given the irreversible global retreat of the state from welfare provision. They argue that expert professional advice is indispensable. They prepare readers to play their part as clients in mutually profitable collaboration with professional advisers. They offer reassurance about the effectiveness of industry regulation and consumer protection. The guides are reflexively implicated in the promotional culture of personal financial services. They support financial advisers’ claim to professional standing, and contribute to the cultural work of creating a clientele for them.