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Ill Health Annuity Mis-selling: Don’t Miss Out on the Pension You Deserve
Learn about ill health annuity mis-selling and how to claim your rightful pension if you qualify for an enhanced annuity.
SERPS Mis-selling: Were You a Victim and What to Do About It?
Unscrupulous financial advisers have exploited this opportunity to invest their clients’ money in high-risk, unsuitable investment schemes, often for personal gain.
The Devastating Consequences of SIPP Mis-Selling and How to Recover
Unscrupulous financial advisers have exploited this opportunity to invest their clients’ money in high-risk, unsuitable investment schemes, often for personal gain.
Understanding the Difference Between FSAVCs and AVCs for Your Pension
In this blog post, we’ll break down the difference between FSAVCs and AVCs, two types of pension contributions that can help boost your retirement savings.
Memorable Cases – Dr H’s FSAVC Pension Plan sale
Dr H explained that she had been given terrible advice in the mid 2000s in relation to a property development and she and her husband (another doctor) had very nearly been made bankrupt in 2011.
Memorable Cases – Mr M’s FSAVC Pension Plan with Aviva
Mr M is in his early 60s and spent his whole career as a teacher, joining the profession at age 23. In the early 1990s he was advised by Colonial Mutual (now part of Aviva) to top-up the benefits he was building up in the Teachers’ Pension Scheme with an FSAVC pension plan.
Memorable Cases – Mr & Mrs A and their Aviva endowment policy
Mr A was unhappy that Aviva had not given him any prior warning before the policy matured that it was performing so poorly. Aviva had failed to send Mr A any of the shortfall warning letters that regulatory rules demanded it send.
Memorable Cases – Bank’s refusal to consider the case
Mrs W is an elderly widow and was advised to put more than half her savings into a Lloyd’s structured investment product. It performed poorly (naturally) and matured after five years with little in the way of profit.
Memorable Cases – Structured investment
A structured investment is the catch-all term often used to describe a product whose returns are linked to the performance of a stock market index, but with some underlying guarantee in case the market suffers a major fall.
Memorable Cases – Mortgage Protection Insurance
I find that a salesman will often try to sell a Rolls Royce when a Ford would do the job. Why? A Rolls Royce costs more and earns the salesman more.
Miss H’s case is a typical example of this.
Memorable Cases – Business Loans
This is a classic case of mis-selling, showing how even a highly intelligent person can be led up the garden path by their bank. Mr D was (and still is) an accountant, but was branching out into a secondary business with a partner.
Pension Transfer – SIPPs
Beware of advisers offering a pot of gold.
Although cold calling has been banned, I continue to be contacted by people that had a call out of the blue from an independent financial adviser, asking about old pension scheme benefits.
Memorable Cases – Vanished Inheritance
Mrs H was referred to me by her new financial adviser, whose clients I had helped in the past. He was concerned that an investment portfolio established by a previous adviser had lost a considerable amount of money – perhaps as much as £1 million – through poor choice of investments.
Memorable Cases – Signature Forgery
This is the story of one that is probably one of the most satisfying cases I have dealt with in recent years. Mr M initially came to me through a referral from another client. Initially, the case seemed a pretty straightforward payment protection insurance case.
The year 2021 reviewed
The year 2021 reviewed. 2021 continued to be a very busy year, particularly in the area of pension mis-selling claims. Fortunately, business was largely unaffected by the pandemic. Many clients are recommended by existing clients and simply call or email for a...
Annual allowance extension for NHS staff
Avoid paying the annual allowance charge which could be an additional 45%. What is the annual allowance? The annual allowance is the amount of pension savings an individual can make in one year before receiving a tax charge. The standard annual allowance limit has...
Self-representation
One question which I am asked perhaps more than any other by prospective clients is “Can I not make a mis-selling claim myself?” The answer, of course, is yes. You can outline your concerns to the firm which gave you advice and if you are not happy with their response...
Doctors and teachers are my biggest group of clients mis-sold FSAVC pension plans in the 1990s
The following article was written by one of my doctor clients and published in the “The Hospital Consultant & Specialist” magazine. I reproduce it here with his kind permission. “Many people will never have heard of FSAVC pension plans. FSAVC stands for...
