www.pensionless.co.uk

Speculator

Interesting site...

http://www.pensionless.co.uk/index.html

Pobby

Zurich,Allied Crowbar

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Yep I have had bad dealings with them!

tim_n

I'm no solicitor/lawyer etc but in the 2nd correspondance they have admitted fault!

Scary stuff - best wishes that he regains control of his pension + an apology.

Titan

I'm not sure if I understand this correctly, but, were the funds stolen from him? What I mean is, whas this scheme "Privileged Connections" some sort of scam?

Surely I would of thought that he should try and go after the scamers and then after Zurich if this was unsuccesfull...

I think a couple lessons are to be learned from this and that is to research the company you are investing with, make sure they are who they say they are. And if anything goes wrong act on it immediately! it makes things easyer to trace down if the timespan is smaller... If the money has been stolen from this man, God knows where it can be now after so many years, but if this was dealt with in the first few months then there is a better chance of tracing it...


I wish all the best to this man.

djohn2002uk

Not sure if it was "stolen" as such but it appears to me that it was missappropriated by Allied Dunbar(Zurich) and I would have thought that a solicitor somewhere would see the strength in his case and be happy to take him on on a "No win no fee" basis, because I'm sure they could claim his costs too after giving Zurich reasonable time to respond positively.
What a shower they are.
Would have thought Watchdog would have been interested too.

Chucksmum

What a bummer! How can Zurich get away with giving someone else's money away?

Debt_Free_Chick

Having gone through OPAS/TPAS .... I wonder why he didn't then file a claim with the Pensions Ombudsman?

dunstonh

There has to be more to this than meets the eye.

1 - What is the police involvement?
2 - Where is this pension company?
3 - Why no attempt to go after the pension company?
4 - Why no complaint to the FOS after Zurich deadlocked it?
5 - Personal responsibility - no advice sought removing the one avenue that would have either spotted the scam or given him protection and passing the liabiltity to the adviser.
6 - Companies often ask the servicing agent to clarify points and will act on those instructions as the servicing agent takes on that liability. If the person/company you appointed isnt authorised and acting outside of the law, then you are a victim of fraud.
7 - No reference to the FSA and their response and why involve the FSCS?

There is one letter from Zurich on that site. One that says they will look into it if he wants them to. Where are the rest? Where is the compliance/customer relations dept letter for rejection explaining why it was rejected and telling him to take it to the FOS?

Also, if this happened all this time ago, why hasnt the media picked it up as a hard done by case? They normally pick up injustices very quickly. Especially when its against an insurance company as that always goes down well with the public.

Reading the site, like the rest of you, it appears that Zurich are out of order. However, if it was that clear cut, surely they would have paid up. Why havent they? What is their actual rejection?

In any story, there are four sides. His, theirs, the truth and how the truth is interpreted.

EdInvestor

Thread on the Mail BB throws more light on it.

dunstonh

Thanks Ed.

It read, "I regret that the company cannot accept that we have made any errors in processing the request. As you are aware, we received a validated instruction to appoint Privilege Connections as agent for Mr Perkins and then subsequently acted on those instructions. The request was to transfer the funds to a scheme that was IR approved, and so we have complied with and discharged our legal responsibility."

There you. He did appoint them to act as agent.

Zurich do appear to have acted within the rules and the chap has been a victim of fraud. As the protection on these things usually means having an FSA authorised individual giving the advice or acting as intermediary, there isnt much scope to blame others as he chose not to get an adviser involved.

Its a nasty thing to have happen all the same and you wouldnt wish it on anyone.

EdInvestor

I guess the lesson here is always to check that any IFA or other individual or firm purporting to offer advice or other financial services is actually what is claims to be.

Is it a regulated firm?Check on the FSA site.

https://www.fsa.gov.uk

But if you do that, be aware there are perfectly respectable firms operating ( eg Sipp providers, complaints firms, home reversion plan providers) who offer products which are desirable but not regulated. So it's often not as clear cut as all that.

And as we know, there are plenty of people who've lost money although dealing with regulated firms.(Think Equitable Life and numerous IFA firms which have gone "bust", using a loophole in the regulations to avoid their liabilities.)

Caveat emptor (buyer beware) is the bottom line.