The new Financial Conduct Authority has warned the industry that do-it-yourself investors could still have a claim for product mis-selling.

No-advice "execution-only" services for financial products are hoping to fill the gap left by the withdrawal of banks from high street advice.

But the FCA says services which claim to offer no advice, but subtly promote views or recommendations, will come under full advice regulation.

"If the customer comes away thinking they have a personal recommendation from the person they have spoken to, it probably was advice," said Sarah Bailey at the FCA.

Websites that list favoured funds or products under the guise of research material could also fall foul of the regulator. The FCA is to review the whole area as one of its early challenges.

Patrick Mill, managing director at Alliance Trust Savings in Dundee, which offers the only flat-rate platform for DIY investors, said: "One of the things we have been very careful about is getting into accidental advice.

"Historically people using platforms have been sophisticated investors and they know what they want to buy. Newer clients spend a lot more time picking and choosing."

For investors there is emerging a new breed of websites that offer guidance through questionnaires, decision trees, and DIY risk profiling, with no adviser involved.

Mr Mill said: "There is much more content on the internet, it is much easier to do than the old days, and platforms generally have made it more accessible to do it yourself."

He expects industry figures to show "quite a dramatic increase in direct business" this year with the advent of 'adviser charging' through fees.

"Now that bank advisers have pretty much disappeared in branches people don't have access to advisers so readily, and there are a number of clients who are not willing to pay a fee, or where advisers won't deal with you because you haven't got enough money, or people don't feel an adviser adds value."

Derek Stewart, founder of SAM Wealth in Glasgow, says investors using "guided websites" should work out why they are investing money, what they are trying to achieve in what timescale, how much risk they are prepared to take and what would happen if it went wrong.

He said: "If somebody is going to look at a website for the very first time, it has to be a reputable company, and education rather than sales biased."

But he added that without in-depth analysis by an experienced adviser, investors could be sold short by the new regulatory emphasis on risk profiling in selecting or suggesting investments.

He said: "Investors have to understand what is under the bonnet of the risk profile. I have a concern about everybody becoming too cautious. There is an underlying fear culture, part of it driven by the regulator."

The new fee-based regime has prompted many firms to opt for giving restricted advice, not covering the whole market so no longer able to call themselves "independent".

But Mr Stewart noted that one motivation for this is the extra costs of professional indemnity insurance for selling structured products, which carry more risk and some varieties of which have occasionally blown up.

But "kick-out" structured plans have at times in recent years been "the only thing that has actually made money", he said.

"We are not all going to invest in structured products, but we will all move to the cautious end of the market if advisers get too worried about the impact on their PI insurance if they do anything out of the norm. The market is going to become vanilla."

Mr Mill added: "It is a good challenge that people may not be taking enough risk – actually if you are cautious, with inflation where it is, you are losing the value of your money."

Most of the biggest advisory firms and networks are now "restricted", among them Towry, where Edinburgh-based adviser John Redpath said: "We think it's a benefit to our clients. We haven't changed what we do, it is the definition of independence that has changed, because we choose not to recommend certain types of product, mainly structured products, we fall into the restricted category."

Mr Redpath said the new regime had raised professional standards considerably. "In the past anyone could walk into this industry and get a qualification within six months- now you have got a better qualified adviser and clients are getting a more transparent offering. I think costs will fall, fund management charges are getting squeezed, and access to wealth management platforms is much easier."

Ross Cameron, who joined Towry from a high street bank, said: "It was very transactional... we had structured product campaigns lasting three to four months when all you were trying to do was sell those products. It is one of the reasons they [banks] have pulled out of the market place, especially when they were getting upfront charges of 6%, 7%, 8% or 9% – those are not the investments we are doing."