Complaints or problems with transfer of benefits from a final salary or defined benefits scheme 2018

Since our last news report on the mis-selling of SIPP pension investments in December 2017, there has been renewed and deepening criticism over the practices of pension and investment advice providers and their introducers. The spotlight is now placed on potentially unsuitable advice by IFA’s to defined benefit scheme members, on transfer of their pension savings out of these valuable schemes to much more risky investments. Transfers out of defined benefit schemes have grown in […]

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Greater access for businesses to the Financial Ombudsman Service

The current Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) Rules only allow businesses classed as “micro-enterprises” to participate in the FOS complaint redress scheme. At the end of January 2018, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) opened a consultation on proposals that would extend access to the FOS to a much larger group of businesses. The FCA consultation identifies that “small businesses often have more in common with individual consumers”, and “small businesses that buy or use financial products […]

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Mis-selling of SIPP investments – what are a consumer’s options?

A SIPP is a Self Invested Personal Pension, and as the name suggests, allow the holder a wide degree of freedom to invest in different types of investments. The SIPP itself is simply a wrapper for the investments within it which can be FCA regulated products such as unit trusts, shares, bonds and gilts and also more risky, unregulated products including collective investment schemes and property investment schemes (UK and overseas). A SIPP can be […]

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Claims or complaints about Fixed Rate Loans – update

Many thousands of businesses have been struggling over recent years to deal with the implications of long term fixed rate loans: ongoing interest costs significantly above current base rate, and unexpectedly high break cost charges for repaying loans early or refinancing. Businesses often feel that they were not fairly informed about the implication of long term fixes when entering into the loan and would either have not fixed their rate, would have chosen a different […]

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