Pension misselling

Allo

It looks like I have a valid claim for pension misselling being advised to move from a deferred final salary scheme to a Personal Pension, the effects have been catastrophic. The IFA(Mercer) has acknowledge the claim and asked for further details. At the same time I have been talking to a claims company who have offered to act on my behalf for a fee of 8% of any compensation.

My question is, what if anything will the claims company be able to achieve that I would not achieve by pursuing the claim direct myself. I am happy to pay for the advice (although 8%) seems steep but I am looking to benefit from the experience of others as to which is the best way forward.

Thanks in anticipation of your help.

mania112

It's my understanding that Mercer are scheme administrators, they do not provide financial advice. I'm sure someone else will confirm.

Your greivance is with the adviser who gave you advice, so you'll need to be clear on who that was.

Although you may be entitled to compensation, you're highly unlikely to get your final salary back.

Disaster.

dunstonh

As above, Mercer are scheme administrators and not IFAs. I dont know if they had an IFA arm in the past though. Nowadays they will facilitate the requests of IFAs or do transactions for the scheme they are administrating. That could include bulk transfers where the scheme is closing or where they have written out offering options for you to choose and you reply to those options.

Was your pension transferred into a personal pension or a section 32 buy out bond?

My question is, what if anything will the claims company be able to achieve that I would not achieve by pursuing the claim direct myself.

absolutely nothing. Indeed, I very much doubt there are many claims companies that have the experience or knowledge to undertake a pension complaint like that. The complaint will be handled identically whether you put in the complaint or the claims company use their one-size-fits-all template letter.

Pension mis-selling happened between 1988 and 1993. All cases in that period had to be reviewed and pro-actively contact the pension holders to check suitability. After that period, it was much harder to actually mis-sell a pension. Not impossible by all means and there have been mis-sale cases but the standards were put in place and the FSA required certain reporting requirements. When did yours occur?

Allo

The original IFA was Sedwick Financial Services and Mercer are now responsible and have admitted this. The advice was given in 1994/5 to switch from a deferred final salary scheme to a personal pension. I am trying to decide if you use a complaints company (there are also IFA's) or deal direct with Mercer.

Thanks.

tallmum

I was mis-sold a pension in 1998 - I moved company and was advised (by IFA) to transfer frozen final salary to personal pension - catastrophic decision! I realised by 2004 that this could have been mis-sold and contacted the company which employed the IFA (since left) - they handed the process to PWC who were handling mis-selling and then I dealt with them - I provided information and they processed it - at no cost to me - I had no special knowledge and was happy with the outcome (it took over 1 year but the compensation payout was significant - twice the value of the pension!) - I wouldn't pay an intermediary, contact the company which you believe mis-sold the pension.

BTW - after feeling "burnt" by this experience I didn't want to use an IFA again, but later relented and am now happy that I have an IFA who is concerned about my wealth not their commission!