Pension mis-selling in the 80's/90's

joeirvine

Hi,
Unfortunately I see you are in a similar position to myself although you received some compensation albeit not enough.
I was conned into transferring out of a final salary pension scheme by a "friend " the scheme is still going up roughly 5% pa whereas what i transferred into is useless so bad i just took the annuity ahead of my pension age p robably wrong choice as well !!
I have appealed twice to the ombudsman the original transfer, but to no avail, one of her comment was I should have known better ? Im now back working in the same organisation a bank through an agency as i dont have a pension and im sick listening to my colleagues talking about their pensions , they are unaware what I done
Have you tried the no win no fee route or any idea what they would charge ?


joe

dunstonh

I have appealed twice to the ombudsman the original transfer, but to no avail, one of her comment was I should have known better ?

you only get one bite of the cherry.

Have you tried the no win no fee route or any idea what they would charge ?

You would almost certainly be timebarred from legal action through the courts as it would be over 15 years ago.

greenglide

I was conned into transferring out of a final salary pension scheme by a "friend "

But was that "friend" actually working in financial services and "sold" you the product or was it a discussion "in the pub" and you just acted on it yourself?

Miss-sale can only occure if something was actually sold?

agarnett

You would almost certainly be timebarred from legal action through the courts as it would be over 15 years ago.

But this makes no sense does it? It is only now in the present time, when the need to claim benefit from an expected asset actually arises, that the aggrieved party can see what actual damage was really done.

Time-barring is now what drives the City in every respect. To use the old adage, "Time IS Money".

The law is an a$$ it it succeeds in allowing the crooks to profit from passage of time to cover their tracks, but that seems to be exactly what it does in so many cases.

Pensions are promises to pay that do not even start to be performed until years or even decades later in most cases. Many until recently have used time unashamedly measured against mortality probability to ensure profit for the pension provider.

In pension complaints especially, time is a material commodity equally as significant in the equation as the monetary redress sought for the wrong.

In the real life equation, the missing compounded performance increases the redress sought, and the level of compounding is justified by the increased length of time since the incident that caused the damage, not reduced by it!

The law of limitation is very wrong in such cases. If it operates as urged by some, it seems like it is aiding and abetting crooked dealing in long term financial contracts.

It is wrong to treat realisation of pension complaints like attempts at prosecuting property border infringements.

Unbeknown to you, your "friend" or your neighbour or maybe just the guy in the next street lays claim to a strip of your land that you have never even visited. You know it exists, and you know it will always have definite value, but due to dense brambles you can't actually get to it. You don't mind that because it acts as a kind of security.

Your friend or neighbour, or friend of a friend says they can access it and don't mind keeping it trimmed from their side. You trust their intention and they are happy and so are you and you forget about it. At some point someone says that "it" would look better from the other side if they watered it, and could they use your garden tap, and unthinkingly you just nod okay, they can water it if they think that's best. They say that they used more water than they expected so they want to pay you something towards it and you also say ok to that - they know best, but the last water bill did seem a bit high! They insist on paying you a bit towards your water bill every year in fact. Maybe you should have asked before now why they did that, but it didn't occur to you?

Then before you know it, 25 years have passed and you think about how perhaps that strip of land might be sold for redevelopment and help your retirement or maybe help give a leg up to the grandkids on the property ladder. Your kids, their parents, are still busy with their own careers and haven't had much time to enquire over your own plans for retirement, let alone your bramble patch. But the grandkids are always looking to visit when they can and helpful to G&G.

Your grandson says he doesn't mind hacking down the brambles from your side and tidying it up like your neighbours have done with their bit - your neighbours said a developer was interested in buying the extended gardens together.

Within ten minutes your grandson rushes back to the house and says there's a swimming pool just behind the brambles at the bottom of your garden (not your swimming pool!). You suddenly realise that the happy laughing and splashing about you'd kind of heard but not taken much notice of for the last twenty summers may have been at your expense, although you did get paid for some of the water! Too late to do anything about it ?

With property borders, maybe so? But pensions ? Is the extent of others laughing and splashing about at your expense over the years quite so obvious ? Of course not. In the UK it is disgracefully nontransparent and deliberately opaque in so many cases. We call it business, and we call it caveat emptor and that is too often the default position of a judiciary whose concept of business culture is often too aligned with consideration of customers as mere cannon fodder for business.

haras_nosirrah

I think statute barring is more often abused by the consumers to get out of paying the money that they owe than by the financial institutions

we see it on the loans board - what would happen if I borrowed 10k and then went abroad for 6 years. Could they track me down?

bigadaj

haras_nosirrah wrote: »

I think statute barring is more often abused by the consumers to get out of paying the money that they owe than by the financial institutions

we see it on the loans board - what would happen if I borrowed 10k and then went abroad for 6 years. Could they track me down?

It's a legal device used by anyone to whom it is favourable.

dunstonh

But this makes no sense does it?
It is only now in the present time, when the need to claim benefit from an expected asset actually arises, that the aggrieved party can see what actual damage was really done.

That is one of the reasons that the FCA complaints process (including the FOS) does not have any limitation other than the 3/6 year rule.

The courts on the other hand do. The firm has reviewed the complaint and it was rejected. The FOS rejected the complaint. So, the only option is the courts but the courts operate under the law not the FCA guidelines.

Also remember that the FOS tends to be more consumer biased than the courts as they disregard things like disclaimers whereas the courts would not. The FOS also ignore a range of supporting documents as most people dont read them (makes you wonder why we issue them when they know people dont read them and they are disregarded in the event of a complaint).

DavidLaGuardia

Culzean wrote: »

16 years later and as I approach retirement the pension has not accrued one single penny and indeed the paltry "compensation" hasn't even got the fund to a sum greater than the original GMP (Guaranteed Minimum Pension) that came with the new pension

I think there is something missing here.

There is the question rightly asked as to whether the compensation should have been higher, but what about the due diligence to make sure it is working thereafter.

In 16 years the majority of pension funds would have delivered. The only obvious assumption here that there was massive under performance and/or excessive charges.

In this time this would have surely been noticeable. Irrespective of the original event the question begged is what has happened in the meantime Did you have a financial adviser in the interim period and wht were the doing? Did you look yourself?