International Adviser
International Adviser is a London-based news service for the international financial advice industry — the professionals who advise expatriates and internationally mobile clients on cross-border insurance, investment, banking and pensions. Launched in 2006 and published for many years by Last Word Media, which became part of Bonhill Group in 2019, it covers the global intermediary market: the advisers, product providers, platforms and regulators whose work begins where a client's life crosses a border. Its website, international-adviser.com, publishes daily news, analysis, video interviews and awards coverage, supported by a subscription model, a daily newsletter and a programme of international events. In a directory of news agencies and services, it represents the highly specialised trade press that serves a single professional community across every continent.
Launched in 2006 for a cross-border profession
International Adviser was launched in 2006, aimed at professionals working in cross-border insurance, investment, banking and pensions for the global intermediary market, in the words of Cision's media database. The timing matched the profession it serves: the mid-2000s saw rapid growth in international advice firms serving British and other expatriates in the Middle East, Asia and Europe, and those advisers needed a title of their own — the UK domestic advice press did not cover offshore products, international regulation or the expatriate client world. The title's coverage remit, as catalogued, spans industry news, investment, best practice and continuing professional development, and it developed features such as the IA 100, recognising influential figures in the industry. Regional editions — the archive shows UK, Europe and Asia editions of its magazine in 2018 — reflected the geography of the readership.
Last Word Media and the Bonhill acquisition
For most of its life International Adviser was published by Last Word Media, a London B2B media business founded in 2005 that served the global asset management industry's sales and marketing needs and the information requirements of the wealth management industry. International Adviser sat alongside sister titles Portfolio Adviser, Expert Investor and Fund Selector Asia; in 2016 the publisher rebranded as Last Word, redesigning the titles' logos, colours and fonts to connect the brands visually, in the company's tenth-birthday year. In April 2019 Bonhill Group, the AIM-quoted London B2B media, events and data business, acquired Last Word Media — a deal advised by Dentons in London with support from its Singapore and Hong Kong teams, reflecting Last Word's footprint of 71 staff in its London head office, eight in Hong Kong and three in Singapore. Bonhill's chief executive Simon Stilwell described Last Word as a leading international B2B media business servicing the global asset management sector, and pointed to combining it with InvestmentNews' presence in the United States; Last Word co-founder and group managing director Jamie Hinchliffe welcomed a future backed by Bonhill's expertise and scale.
What International Adviser covers
The editorial diet is the working life of the international adviser. News coverage tracks product providers — international life companies, platform and structured-product firms — and their launches, appointments and strategy changes; regulation in the many jurisdictions where advisers operate, from European rules to Middle Eastern and Asian licensing regimes; and the business of advice itself, including consolidations, qualifications and best practice. Dedicated strands have included NRI Adviser, covering developments relevant to advisers serving non-resident Indian clients, and a CPD Corner of educational articles with multiple-choice quizzes helping advisers meet continuing professional development requirements — a service feature that turns a news title into part of its readers' professional compliance. Video has become a significant format: the site's recent output includes interviews filmed at its Latin America forum in Mexico City, exclusive interviews with provider executives, and coverage of its awards, reflecting an audience that increasingly consumes trade media as broadcast content.
Events and awards: the community in person
International Adviser's events and awards are central to its role. Its Global Financial Services Awards — announced in 2026 with a televised premiere on its site — recognise providers serving the international market, while its regional forums convene the industry in person: the fifth annual Latin America forum in 2026 drew around 150 delegates to Mexico City, and the site reported events news from across its regions. For a readership scattered across Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, London and Latin America, these gatherings and awards form the professional community's meeting points, and the title that organises them becomes more than a news source: it becomes the community's host. That is a standard B2B media model, executed here across an unusually dispersed geography.
The subscription model
International Adviser moved to a subscription model as part of its digital evolution, explaining to readers that the change would ensure it could continue bringing the news, views and professional development support they rely on. The structure allowed everyone to read up to two pieces of content a week free without signing in; beyond that, readers were prompted to take a fourteen-day trial or a subscription, priced at £205 per year plus VAT where applicable, with discounts for multiple subscriptions from the same company arranged offline, and access delivered by an activation link emailed to the subscriber rather than a password. The detail matters as a snapshot of trade-media economics in transition: an advertising-supported expatriate-era title converting to reader revenue as its audience professionalised and its content — CPD material, regulatory intelligence, provider news — became something firms would pay for directly.
Readership and market position
The readers are international financial advisers and the ecosystem around them: provider sales and distribution teams, compliance specialists, paraplanners and the executives of cross-border wealth firms. Within the Bonhill and Last Word portfolio, International Adviser complements Portfolio Adviser's UK wealth audience and Expert Investor's European fund-selector readership, giving the group coverage of the adviser and asset-management value chain across regions. Its competitors are the other titles and information services chasing the same cross-border community, but its two decades of continuity — from its 2006 launch through ownership change to its current subscription and events model — give it the incumbency advantage of the title the industry grew up reading.
Why International Adviser matters
Cross-border advice is a sector where information failures hurt real people: expatriates sold unsuitable products, or caught by the rule change of a jurisdiction they no longer live in, have generated scandals that regulators across several continents have had to answer. A specialist news service that tracks providers, products and regulators in all the relevant places at once is part of the profession's self-correction mechanism — publicising enforcement, explaining rule changes, and holding providers' claims up to daily scrutiny. International Adviser's longevity, its integration of news with CPD and events, and its position inside a larger B2B group make it the reference title for that world, and a clear example of how London's trade media serves professional communities far beyond Britain's shores.
International Adviser today
Today the title operates as a digital-first service: daily news and video on international-adviser.com, a daily newsletter, digital editions of its magazine in its archive, subscriber access to premium content, and an events calendar anchored by its forums and the Global Financial Services Awards. The expatriate advice industry it was founded to cover has consolidated, regulated and globalised further since 2006; the title has changed owners, business models and formats in step with it. That adaptability — magazine to website, advertising to subscription, print awards to televised premieres — is the story of modern trade publishing in miniature, and International Adviser remains its London-based chronicler for the cross-border advice profession.
