Financial Ombudsman admitted errors on Pension mis-selling case

JGJackson

I opened a case with the FO in 2010 after being mis-sold a personal pension in the 90s by my IFA on leaving a big international company with an excellent company scheme. They took it up for me and just after it started I was made an offer by the IFA. However, the adjudicator would not tell me what the offer actually was. She did say I had a case so I just went with them and continued. Note that my idea of what amounts we were talking about here ranged in the £5k to £10k range.


As it turned out the case went on and on and I was eventually awarded the decision over 2 years later (2012). In the FO decision document created I discovered the offer amount was £42k!! The case would have stopped in 2010 if the adjudicator had told me what it was then.


The FO kept telling me throughout their max award amount was £100k and asking was I OK with this. So I was led to believe my loss was more than this although once again they wouldn't tell me what it was despite frequently asking.


Then the biggest surprise (to all and sundry apparently) - the actuary who did the loss calculation (locally assigned by the IFA company not the FO!) decided that I hadn't lost out at all because they use values from 2003 rather than current ones for some strange reason. My question is what values did the FO use to ascertain that I had a case? Obviously not the 2003 values. So I've ended up with a fixed annuity nothing like an indexed company pension.


Anyway, I recently complained to the Chief Exec of the FO and got a reply which admitted an error by the then adjudicator (very early in the proceedings) in not telling me what the amount was and that "they were sorry" - but nothing else!

This a very precis-ed version of the happenings throughout as, initially, I really wanted to be put back into the company scheme. This wasn't possible as that type of move has been stopped.

Has anyone any advice as to what, if anything, I can do to possibly retrieve something from this admitted major error on their part e.g. can I sue the FO for incompetence and my loss of an amount that would have helped more than a bit in my retirement years?