Our mystery shop of financial advisers found their advice to be scandalously poor.

Good, bad, helpful, useless – who knows what to believe about financial advisers. We wanted to know what advisers really delivered to consumers. But the results from our mystery shop shocked even us: this is an industry in serious need of reform.

Only 3 out of 17 advisers produced plans that were rated "good" by an expert panel. The remaining 14 were rated as "disappointing" or were "rejected".