MI Group Pension, lost their details how can I find out ?

ClareandTheDogs

The MI Group in London sold me a couple of pensions/investments back in the late 80's early 90's. Due to a divorce and moving house more than 5 times since, I have lost their details. I have done an internet search on the MI Group with no results.
I cannot find who owns them now or even a telephone number.
I have been on the Governments Web Site to locate a pension, but the policy numbers are required, I do not have these to hand either.
Help!

xylophone

https://www.apjsolicitors.co.uk/is-my-sipp-safe-with-merchant-investors/

08/01/2019

Merchant Investors is a Bristol based company best known for underwriting high net worth life assurance and pension products. Initially part of Allianz (UK), Merchant Investors (also known as MI Group) was purchased by a South African investment company called Sanlam in 2003/2004.

ClareandTheDogs

I have found them on the internet.
Will begin to track my pension down now.
Thanks again, Clare

Snow_Dog

Its been many years since I heard the name MI Group.


If I remember right they were based in an office block somewhere round by centrepoint for a while - possibly had a floor there for a while and also offices north side of Oxford Street in the late 1980s.


I had a couple of investment policies with them, supposedly sold as 10 year plans.


Very high pressure sales techniques if I remember right and taught me a good lesson as a teenager.


Sorry if the above isnt of much use in your search but if you do manage to get anywhere and struggle to get a resolution then PM for more info on what happened with my policies.

cdesouza

Snow_Dog said:

Its been many years since I heard the name MI Group.


If I remember right they were based in an office block somewhere round by centrepoint for a while - possibly had a floor there for a while and also offices north side of Oxford Street in the late 1980s.


I had a couple of investment policies with them, supposedly sold as 10 year plans.


Very high pressure sales techniques if I remember right and taught me a good lesson as a teenager.


Sorry if the above isnt of much use in your search but if you do manage to get anywhere and struggle to get a resolution then PM for more info on what happened with my policies.

Sounds very familiar as I also was given that hard-sell around that time. Long story short I was sold a couple of policies which I stopped investing in a few years later. 
I have noted a number of companies offering to check if I am due compensation (i.e. TTP) and was curious to understand if you did manage to get resolution, how you went about it and what compensation was received.
Thanks, Chris

dunstonh

I have noted a number of companies offering to check if I am due compensation (i.e. TTP) and was curious to understand if you did manage to get resolution, how you went about it and what compensation was received.

Thanks, Chris

Why would the OP get compensation? - nothing in his post suggests he was attempting to get compensation or that there had been any wrongdoing.

Snow_Dog

dunstonh said:

I have noted a number of companies offering to check if I am due compensation (i.e. TTP) and was curious to understand if you did manage to get resolution, how you went about it and what compensation was received.

Thanks, Chris

Why would the OP get compensation? - nothing in his post suggests he was attempting to get compensation or that there had been any wrongdoing.

Sorry for the long delay in responding to this but thought I had something to add.

MI group back in the late 80's employed pressurised sales tactics, they were selling very long term policies designed to mature way down the line, however their main sales technique was to push these as maturing in 10 years with very overinflated examples of return.

At the time I wouldn't consider myself to be massively financially savvy and this was pre internet days so finding out information about this sort of thing was a little more difficult back then.

When I got to the 10 year anniversary of my first policy and was looking for the policy to mature it was worth slightly less than what was put into it. A friend of mine tried the method of threatening them with everything from the police to the fraud squad and the financial ombudsman. They sent him a cheque for the difference between the current value and what he had put in.

I contacted them and was a lot more polite and asked them to consider compensating me to the tune of what I would have achieved simply putting the money into a building society instead for the ten years and giving sensible examples. This they did without argument, so a silver lining when starting out asking nicely.

Modigliani90

ClareandTheDogs said:

I have found them on the internet.
Will begin to track my pension down now.
Thanks again, Clare

Hi Claire, 

Juts came across your post and wondering if you had any success and how you tracked down your MI Group pension, as I have the exact same issue as you had. 

Any tips are welcome. 

Thank you,

Claire 

stationhouse26

Just stumbled across this thread and was after some opinions / advice on mis-selling.

I had the misfortune to get involved with this company back in the 90s when I was very young and naïve.

After some very hard selling I took out monthly contributions to a pension, a life assurance policy and a savings program & opted out of serps. Fortunately I then ceased dealing with them as I found a visit to their plush London offices a very unpleasant experience.

Now besides the policies performing relatively poorly & the fact that I'm not now awash with riches that the salesman promised at the time, was I mis sold & due compensation?

You could argue at least I was saving something even if it was a very poor product.

I have seen from earlier in this thread there is a claims company TPP offering to seek compensation from the MI Group. TPP seem to have another fancy website but not much else. But I can't see what they would seek compensation for, or am I missing something?

I was thinking of contacting them just to see what happens but am wary of signing up with claims people.

What do you think?

Marcon

stationhouse26 said:

Just stumbled across this thread and was after some opinions / advice on mis-selling.

I had the misfortune to get involved with this company back in the 90s when I was very young and naïve.

After some very hard selling I took out monthly contributions to a pension, a life assurance policy and a savings program & opted out of serps. Fortunately I then ceased dealing with them as I found a visit to their plush London offices a very unpleasant experience.

Now besides the policies performing relatively poorly & the fact that I'm not now awash with riches that the salesman promised at the time, was I mis sold & due compensation?

You could argue at least I was saving something even if it was a very poor product.

What do you think?

I think you're likely to be well and truly time barred if you are complaining about advice received 30 years ago - and why do you think you were 'mis-sold'?


Contracting out of SERPS for someone under 40 was almost invariably a good move, especially now (which obviously couldn't have been foreseen back in the 90s) with the changes to the state pension system.

stationhouse26

Thanks for the reply Marcon.

You have confirmed what I thought, I was confused by the company TPP offering to seek compensation against the MI Group & couldn't understand on what grounds they could claim compensation.

I'm a bit old school and tend to think if I've taken / acted on bad advice or signed up to a bad product there's no one to blame but myself. There seems to have been a culture shift and now its always someone else fault.

If I have learnt one thing in life it's never trust a sales person!

With regard to contracting out, laziness and lack of understanding have been my friend! By following the crowd and then doing nothing we have had the good fortune to have had a result.

So in summary I didn't think I was "mis-sold" just aggressively persuaded to take out products I didn't really want at the time and probably paid large commissions to the Sales person, but hey ho it was a good lesson in life.