Taking action against negligent Financial Adviser

DurhamGal

Hi,

I’m looking for some advice with regards to our (useless) financial advisor. First a bit background:
My OH ran a company with a business partner and the recently decided to go their separate ways, so he started a new company on his own in Feb this year (2015). He met with his financial adviser to cancel any policies relating to the old company and start up new critical illness/income protection/life insurance and pension etc. OH has the minutes from the meeting with exactly what he had to do (cancelling old direct debits) and what the FA had to do (what new policies to start, how much they needed to be for etc).

That was in Feb, fast forward to August bank holiday, my OH is knocked off his motorbike by a tractor and suffers various injuries which means he will be unable to work for at least 4 months. We contact the FA about claiming on his income protection policy and hear nothing back from him. While OH is still in hospital I start ring his policies from the limited documentation we have (FA sorted everything). Anyway 2 weeks after the crash it turns out the FA hasn’t organised income protection as instructed, but two (quite expensive, yet next to useless) critical illness policies. We finally get through to the FA who says he will look into it but has since ignored any contact from us. Further down the line we find out he has also forgot to reinstate OH’s pension following a 2mth payment holiday when the companies switched over.

Basically he has left us high and dry… and I want to know if there is anything we can do.

dunstonh

Anyway 2 weeks after the crash it turns out the FA hasn’t organised income protection as instructed, but two (quite expensive, yet next to useless) critical illness policies.

All insurance is useless unless you have to claim. More people claim on CI policies than life assurance.

Did you have income protection before or was that CI as well?

he has also forgot to reinstate OH’s pension following a 2mth payment holiday when the companies switched over.

That is probably a good thing considering how the market has dropped.

Clearly the relationship is over. There may be scope for complaint if the insurances are different to what was held before. On the pension side, its likely to be an error that results in a gain. So, that is easily resolved.

Quentin

Thousands have complaints against their IFA's every year.


They tend to ignore them as you have discovered.


You do need to follow the correct procedure and raise a formal complaint directly with the IFA.


They have 8 weeks to reply. If they ignore you or you are unhappy with the response you can escalate to the FOS for their adjudication at no charge to you.


If you are still unhappy after the FOS have given their verdict, then your final avenue is using the court, though that does involve costs which you can only recover if you win (and the IFA hasn't gone bust!)

kingstreet

Do you have a "demands and needs statement" or DNS, for the protection advice? What does it say there about income protection?

If it was recommended, there should be details of the provider, cover details etc. If not recommended, reasons why it wasn't may be there.

How you approach the complaint should reflect the wording of the DNS.

Was this someone giving independent advice, or a tied, or multi-tied agent?