reclaim serps

phantom177

i have been contacted by wefindanypension.com and have been informed that i may be able to claim back my serps pension has any one done this or
heard of this claim,

dunstonh

The FSA did a review of contracting out and found a tiny failure rate of 1.5%. It published a guide to help you decide if you may have been mis-sold or not.

You can view it here: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100210151716/moneymadeclear.fsa.gov.uk/pdfs/s2p_wrongly_advised_ink.pdf

There are only a handful of claims companies acting in this area. prior to PPI they thought contracting out mis-sale complaints would be a big thing but the regulator put paid to that with their findings and most ceased to put in complaints as a 1.5% failure rate is not good. Those few that are left tend to do it to try and find out about your pension and sell you a different pension and either take a fee from that or a commission (if unregulated scheme).

The company you mention are not regulated by the FCA and are not authorised to give pension advice. You should have nothing to do with unregulated companies as that is where most scams are.

jamesd

Even if you were one of those who suffered a loss, you still can't "claim back" the SERPS pension. What you would get is a payment for the difference in expected payout from SERPS compared to the expected payout from the pension pot you have accumulated, made into the pension pot. And if you used a claims company, a bill to pay them, not out of the pension pot. In reality those differences tend to be small because contracting out was almost always a good idea.

The companies doing this normally seem to expect to make money by charging a fee that they will make even when almost all claims would be rejected.

A first step in finding out whether you even have a chance of making a claim is to consider whether you were actually advised to contract out of SERPS by a professional? If you weren't then there's nobody to claim from because it was your own decision.

Sezan

I was advise by a guy from legal and general or was it standard life anyway definitely one of those two to contract out of SERPS I now have a small pot with Aviva , how it got there I do not know but anyway the pot has to buy an annuity which is more or less worthless! My questions are

1 as this happened in the early 80s how do I prove that the guy was a financial advisor?

2. How do I find out what it would have been worth if I had not contracted out?

Seems to me that it's tough titty to those like me that took the advise of the professional expert?!

dunstonh

1 as this happened in the early 80s how do I prove that the guy was a financial advisor?

It probably wasnt an FA. An FA is tied to one company. You mention three different companies that have no link with each other.

You couldnt contract out of Serps until 88.

2. How do I find out what it would have been worth if I had not contracted out?

A state pension forecast. However, note that contracted in benefits have to match state pension age (whatever that ends up being) and you cant get a tax free cash payment from it (like you can from contracted out)

Seems to me that it's tough titty to those like me that took the advise of the professional expert?!

Most people who have contracted out are financially better off. However, since around 1997 when Labour reduced the rebates, it became largely cost neutral.

Why do you think you have been done wrong?

dunstonh

Thanks to Ark Welder on another thread.....

This company has now had a an FCA consumer warning issued against it:
http://www.fca.org.uk/news/warnings/we-find-any-pension