Are Reliance Mutual Plans Paying Well?

Crazy_Saver

EdInvestor wrote: »

Using an IFA is supposed to protect you from misselling because you can go through the complaints mechanism, but often we find either that the IFA has conveniently moved onto a new company leaving the liabilities for misselling with a bankrupt shell - so you get nothing - or the IFA completely refuses to uphold the complaint ( whether it is fair or not) and defends the claim down to the wire often managing to persuade the staff at the Ombudsman (which is staffed mainly by people who formerly worked in the industry).

In many cases it looks like the luck of the draw plays the biggest role.

Funny that!!

I am currently battling with some very biased adjudicators. They witheld all of the correspondence between themselves and the firm whilst copying all of our correspondence to the firm as and when it happened. Therefore, the firm were given the opportunity to reply to everything we said whereas we were left in the dark.

I finally managed to get copies sent on to me although it was after we made our final submission in preparation for the ombudsman's decision:mad:

It made very interesting reading-the adjudicator had spent a couple of days trying to help the firm re-instate a time bar. Luckily, Zurich were really honest and admitted to the fos that they never gave us any deadlines to complain. Fair play to Zurich:T

The fos have at last agreed to our request to give us time to reply to everything the firm has said.

Reliance Mutual have been very helpful and are going to e-mail me with details of how much it would have cost us to top up our original policies rather than surrender them.

Fingers crossed

dunstonh

Using an IFA is supposed to protect you from misselling because you can go through the complaints mechanism, but often we find either that the IFA has conveniently moved onto a new company leaving the liabilities for misselling with a bankrupt shell - so you get nothing - or the IFA completely refuses to uphold the complaint ( whether it is fair or not) and defends the claim down to the wire often managing to persuade the staff at the Ombudsman (which is staffed mainly by people who formerly worked in the industry).

IFAs pro-rata have far less complaints than any other distribution channel. The shirking of liabilities onto the FSCS has been an issue but that has affected firms remaining in business rather than consumers (albeit they have the longer waiting period with the FSCS). It is harder to shirk responsibility as well. The other issue is a number of IFAs were regulated under FIMBRA and not the PIA and if they resigned FIMBRA before 1994 and did not seek authorisation under the PIA then there was no consumer protection. This was a bit of a loophole in regulation that is historic and not an issue going forward.

IFAs also generally have better written reports and client files (note generally not always). Its usually the salesforces (tied or IFA) that tend to have the poor quality files.

Whilst you say that IFAs manage to persuade staff at the FOS to change their mind, you will find the industry view is the reverse of that and that the FOS favour the consumer.

Crazy_Saver

dunstonh wrote: »

Whilst you say that IFAs manage to persuade staff at the FOS to change their mind, you will find the industry view is the reverse of that and that the FOS favour the consumer.

Not in our case though dunston.:(