Santander saying I may of been mis-sold?

mumx3

4yrs ago I invested with Santander, in a stocks and shares ISA and in unit trusts. They both have made a small profit, but last week had a letter saying I may of been mis-sold the products and giving me the chance to cash them in.

My question is why would they be saying this, how do they decide that I may of been mis-sold, 4yrs later?

I'm quite happy atm to leave them as is, as the interest rates are so low elsewhere.

Really not sure what to do though, this has confused me a little.??

Any advice much appreciated,

plunt

they going to provide you any compensation for being mis-sold. What level of profit have you made (%) . If you were mis-sold you may be able to claim back lost interest on the amount...

mumx3

plunt wrote: »

they going to provide you any compensation for being mis-sold. What level of profit have you made (%) . If you were mis-sold you may be able to claim back lost interest on the amount...

Its made around 2%,

Haven't been told anything about compensation?
What should I do, do I just ring them and ask?

plunt

hmm ring and ask if it is "spam" and use the actual number on the bank website not any letters you got... DONT agree to any form of compensation and just hear what they have to say. dont confirm or deny anything. but just find out whats going on. 2% for 4 years is extremely bad! you would have been better off putting in an extremely low rate isa!

was it a structured product? do you have more details on the type of investment. Some googling shows santander did get hit with various investment mis-selling.

But I do stress dont agree to anything and dont deny or confirm you were mis-sold. If they offer you anything say you will think about it and seek advice

System

may have been mis-sold

bowlhead99

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

may have been mis-sold

Well said, I almost didn't click on the thread at all because it was so painful to read the headline.

My question is why would they be saying this, how do they decide that I may of been mis-sold, 4yrs later?

There are other threads on the forum about this. Santander were fined £12m earlier this year for providing unsuitable investment advice to customers who had investments in ‘portfolio investments’, structured investments and investment bonds. The fine would have been higher if not for an early-settlement discount, and related to mis-selling totalling £118.2m in revenue in the period January 2010 to December 2012, and more difficult to quantify revenues in the 6 years before that.

Per the press at the time, Santander’s head of UK banking, Steve Pateman, issued an apology to customers and said the bank ‘regrets’ that some of its branch- based investment sales processes “did not meet the required regulatory standards”. However, he said that detriment - and therefore any likely payout - would be “low” based on “underlying investment performance”.

Following this they had to implement some programmes to review how they did things and agreed to contact customers to give them the chance to withdraw.

So, whether or not you were actually missold, they are offering you the chance to exit your investments if you don't want them. If you keep them and end up losing a chunk of money, or get a very minimal performance, and later complain, they will say that they had held their hands up, warned you that the advice might not have been right for you, and you were given the chance to reconsider - but you wanted to take the risk, so it is your fault you lost money because all investments carry risk.

I assume they are not offering compensation at this point because you haven't lost anything and many people would be fine with the products they have. You have to show you have lost out if you wanted to be compensated for losing something.

Getting only 2% in a stock market boom is hardly a good return but it depends on the type of product you have, what the underlying investments are and whether you've actually done the maths properly. Either way, it is better than getting next to nothing in a savings account that loses its promotional rate after a few months. But if your poor performance is due to high fees and the return is not what you would have expected from the paperwork and advertising material, you could complain and they would be sympathetic because it has already been judged that their sales process was not up to scratch. That doesn't mean that they are going to turn your 2% return into a 10% one.