Pensions Mis-selling financial redress

xylophone

To jewellry10, you seem to indicate that you left as an active member or opted-out as it was termed? Also did you join an alternative employer's scheme at a later date?

Are you asking the OP whether the pension in question related to her membership of a contracted out scheme?

If so, she has answered this question above

There is the issue that the company pension scheme was contracted out, and the complex rules around GMP (from additional SERPS entitlement) are also in play!

Or is the question whether she remained in the employ of the scheme sponsor but transferred her accrued benefits into a DC scheme and opted out of the company pension?

Or whether she left the employ of the scheme sponsor and transferred her accrued DB pension either to a new employer's DC scheme or to a personal pension?

SonOf

They have offered £1,500 to pay an IFA to advise me on what to do. I contacted my IFA who seemed clueless but put me onto a soliticitor who said they have an actuary that can help me. But Gallaghers say they will not pay for these services, just an IFA. So now I am halfway down a route and not sure whether to just take the money or invest in these services to check it out.

It is likely to be a S166 review which requires each case to be reviewed. Normally this work is undertaken by a third party company. They automatically look at cases and if they find a potential failing (doesnt have to be an actual failing) then they will usually fail the case and send it to the calculations team. The redress offered often includes an amount to pay for an IFA to review it.

With DB transfers though, it requires a pension transfer specialist IFA to look at it and only around 1 in 10 hold those permissions. This is probably why your IFA couldnt do it.

I had experience with a S166 review with a network and the third party company was finding the majority of the cases had a potential failure. However, most of them were overturned as the company checking was using low-quality staff prone to making mistakes. I know one adviser had around 130 cases checked and had 70 odd classed as unsuitable. He was able to get all but three overturned as the reasons were daft. Two of those three resulted in no redress and the one that did have the daftest reason possible. A corrupted pdf was the reason. The advice was considered suitable but because one of the pdfs was damaged, they couldnt be certain of the content. Even though every other pdf showed sufficient information to make the case suitable.

Another adviser in that review didnt bother checking any of the failures once he was told that he would not be picking up the bill. Lots of people ended up getting payouts they shouldn't have had the checkers done the job right.

The point of all this is that there is a risk to getting your case reviewed. On a recheck, they could find an error in your favour. Or they could find that you shouldn't actually get anything.

DaveMcG

xylophone wrote: »

Are you asking the OP whether the pension in question related to her membership of a contracted out scheme?

If so, she has answered this question above



Or is the question whether she remained in the employ of the scheme sponsor but transferred her accrued benefits into a DC scheme and opted out of the company pension?

Or whether she left the employ of the scheme sponsor and transferred her accrued DB pension either to a new employer's DC scheme or to a personal pension?

The regulatory exercise was called the "review of pension transfers and opt-outs" or something similar. An opt-out being someone who was a current member of an employers' scheme, left that scheme while still in the relevant employment and took out a personal pension.


There were two categories of opt outs - those who had left the employment of the relevant employer and those who were still in that employment. The latter would either have been able to rejoin the scheme and possibly have the lost benefits reinstated or perhaps due to scheme rules or the closure of the scheme be unable to rejoin. If unable to rejoin there might have been a defined contribution scheme for them to join.