Missold investment with pension funds

nicnac150

Hi,

This is my first time posting on here and basically it is because I don't know where to start. My Dad retired a few years ago and received a large lump sum of money. Being a fellow who has never had any money to "deal with" he has no knowledge of the financial sector and sought advice from an independent financial advisor. To cut a long story short my Dad told them he wanted solely low risk investments as he did not want to risk losing the money. They advised him to partake in three separate investments. Basically he has never had anything back off two of these, the other he receives a quarterly payment from. We were advised by the financial advisor that one investment had "gone belly up" of which £45000 had been invested, it was at this point the whole situation started to arouse our suspicion. Since then this "financial advisory" company has apparently gone into administration and leaves my Dad with a massive chunk of his pension lost. My Dad feels he was massively mis sold these investments as hehas later found out these were very high risk investments when his only specification was he did not want anything high risk! Please can someone advise us on where we go from here as any help really would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance

atush

nicnac150 wrote: »

Hi,

This is my first time posting on here and basically it is because I don't know where to start. My Dad retired a few years ago and received a large lump sum of money. Being a fellow who has never had any money to "deal with" he has no knowledge of the financial sector and sought advice from an independent financial advisor. To cut a long story short my Dad told them he wanted solely low risk investments as he did not want to risk losing the money. They advised him to partake in three separate investments. Basically he has never had anything back off two of these, the other he receives a quarterly payment from. We were advised by the financial advisor that one investment had "gone belly up" of which £45000 had been invested, it was at this point the whole situation started to arouse our suspicion. Since then this "financial advisory" company has apparently gone into administration and leaves my Dad with a massive chunk of his pension lost. My Dad feels he was massively mis sold these investments as hehas later found out these were very high risk investments when his only specification was he did not want anything high risk! Please can someone advise us on where we go from here as any help really would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance

Normally you would first file a complaint against the advisor who carries indemnity insurance.

If they have gone belly up, check with the receiver, but I suspect you'll have to go to the pensions advisory service?

PensionTech

Have you checked to see if the company/individual was actually authorised by the FCA to provide the advice given? You can look for them, and see all their permissions, on the Financial Services Register: http://www.fsa.gov.uk/register/home.do.

You can also look for them on the FCA "warning" list: http://www.fca.org.uk/consumers/protect-yourself/unauthorised-firms/unauthorised-firms-to-avoid

If they are (or were, at the time of advice) authorised, the FCA may be your best bet. You can call their consumer helpline on 0800 111 6768 or 0300 500 8082 and someone should be able to talk things through with you.

If you're happy to tell us who they were, people reading this might be able to give you more information about them.

princeofpounds

Yes it's very hard to comment without knowing whether the person you think was an IFA actually WAS a properly regulated IFA.

Do you have any documentation around the initial assessment that was done, specifically the risk tolerance analysis?

And can you provide us with a bit more detail about those investments that were actually made?

Finally, were these investments actually made in a pension or not? It is not entirely clear from your posts whether they actually were.

nicnac150

Thanks for the replies. Sorry didn't post much detail, this is way out of my comfort zone and definitely not my forte shall we say.
The company were Total Wealth Management based in Sale Cheshire. My Dad went to them when he retired and several pensions paid out. They advised 3 seperate investments, one in a storage company in Bury that pays out every quarter (so he is not concerned about this one) One was in farmland in Argentina and another one you may of heard of was the "Green Oil " Plantation. He was advised to invest in to these three companies and then advised to leave a small amount in a SIPP. I will have to check with my Dad regarding whether he has any initial documentation regarding the risk. I will definitely look into the FCA advice though.
It's very difficult when both of us are completely unaware of how such financial plans work and really appreciate any help from you all.

noh

They are no longer authorised by the FCA.

197397 - Total Wealth Management Limited

Current status: No longer Authorised
Effective Date: 31/12/2014

kangoora

nicnac150 wrote: »

Thanks for the replies. Sorry didn't post much detail, this is way out of my comfort zone and definitely not my forte shall we say.
The company were Total Wealth Management based in Sale Cheshire. My Dad went to them when he retired and several pensions paid out. They advised 3 seperate investments, one in a storage company in Bury that pays out every quarter (so he is not concerned about this one) One was in farmland in Argentina and another one you may of heard of was the "Green Oil " Plantation. He was advised to invest in to these three companies and then advised to leave a small amount in a SIPP. I will have to check with my Dad regarding whether he has any initial documentation regarding the risk. I will definitely look into the FCA advice though.
It's very difficult when both of us are completely unaware of how such financial plans work and really appreciate any help from you all.

Oh dear, all 3 investments sound like potential scam investments. There's been a number of threads about storage companies but you may have a good one there, only time will tell. I wish you all the best.

addedvaluebob

Given that your father wanted low risk investments it does not appear at a superficial level that these investments fit the bill for what your father wanted. The company itself appears to be in the liquidation process so contact the official receiver. The next step will be to identify the mis-sale and for your father to put in a claim via the FSCS if the investment (or part of it) has gone belly up. If he can get compensated the next step is then to get any monies transferred into something safe.

Interestingly enough it appears that most of the advisers attached to this company have moved to new jobs so it appears that the principal is happy to give rubbish advice and let the rest of the advising community pick up the bill, again.

Norfolk_Norris

Hi nicnac150; I am sorry to hear your all to common story... Out of interest, was the GreenOil scheme company 'susatainable agro energy' or similar?

jamesd

Just to expand a bit on what addedvaluebob wrote, because these were advised sales by a properly authorised IFA it is likely that your father will get most of his money back. It's a clear and utter failure to respect the client's risk tolerance and capacity for loss.

The official receiver probably will not have money to pay but if the OR doesn't, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme should pay most of the loss. It is likely to take many months for that to happen once the process has been started and it wouldn't surprise me if a year from now it was still not complete.

It'll be frustrating but please do let us know how things go along the way so we can help others by pointing to this as an example of their money probably eventually mostly being recovered.