SVS Securities - shut down?

FairDinkum

My2penneth said:

How are we going to get our assets out of ITI in anything like a reasonable timeframe?

Do we all agree that 'reasonable timeframe' has already expired? LC is responsible for this. They have been paid by us (compensated by FSCS) to administer the closedown of svs in our interest. Have they done that job? 

Standard_Goose

To save me trawling through 204 pages could someone please answer a question for me.

On what basis did we end up at ITI?

Were the administrators trying to get paid a fee by a company to get 30k new customers, or were they trying to find anyone who would take us at no cost or was it that they were trying to find the company that would charge the administrators the least for processing us? I can't believe there is a single broker in the UK that doesn't want 30k potential new customers and if they charge a fee to process us then that is a cost that the FSCS must bear.

It should be obvious that in a situation like this you need a large firm with a solid foundation to take control and give the victims a safe and reliable route out.

If a large company like AJ Bell (who i now have an account with and trust not to go SVS on me) had taken us on it would have mostly been sorted by now and i reckon 30%+ would have stayed as customers. That HAS to have a value!

So I ask again - how the hell have we ended up at ITI?

snipkin

Out of interest, (while we are waiting, as it were) where was the 2018 investigation into SVS reported? Does anyone have any links to reports about that? l keep up with the financial news but I did not see any reports on SVS in the financial pages. And also not about the 2019 special administration (from which we are all still suffering one year later...). Interest in this kind of thing tends to be confined to the specialist financial 'trade press'.
However, I agree, Google Alerts is a valuable tool (one of many) and has picked up many reports about SVS during the last year for me (nearly all, needless to say, in the specialist press - except perhaps one - and all AFTER THE EVENT. Reports WARNING of problems which are rarely seen - if these things can be predicted... And I myself do not know (and, frankly, don't have time or enough interest to learn - so my fault, I guess) how to access or read financial statements from which such a warning might be gleaned. Anyway, this post is veering slightly off subject. ..

Danie6

I can't see how ITI will make money from this mess. Is their system still working for their existing clients? What happens if they go belly up now and do we then have to go along the same route as the last year with LC? Is there a way to jump ship? They can at least say something, even if it is just "Good bye".

My2penneth

Standard_Goose said:

To save me trawling through 204 pages could someone please answer a question for me.

On what basis did we end up at ITI?

So I ask again - how the hell have we ended up at ITI?

See my post on page 197 12:25pm .
The downselection process as given to me by one of LC's representatives (phonecall) earlier this week.

pafpcg

Standard_Goose said:

To save me trawling through 204 pages could someone please answer a question for me.

On what basis did we end up at ITI?

Were the administrators trying to get paid a fee by a company to get 30k new customers, or were they trying to find anyone who would take us at no cost or was it that they were trying to find the company that would charge the administrators the least for processing us? I can't believe there is a single broker in the UK that doesn't want 30k potential new customers and if they charge a fee to process us then that is a cost that the FSCS must bear.

It should be obvious that in a situation like this you need a large firm with a solid foundation to take control and give the victims a safe and reliable route out.

.......

So I ask again - how the hell have we ended up at ITI?

To understand the process of selecting a "new broker", you should read the documents issued by Leonard Curtis on their web-site (start with the Distribution Plan).  There is one document which briefly describes the selection process: - lots of companies expressed interest, a handful investigated and offered initial bids but only two actually submitted definite bids - ITI Capital was selected.*

I understand that LC expected the "new broker" to pay for the take-over of the SVS accounts. The income from this would benefit the SVS creditors.  My speculation would be that the large existing brokers (H-L, AJBell, II, etc) concluded that the costs of absorbing the SVS accounts into their operations wasn't worth the benefit of potential new clients.  It's possible that in the data issued (in confidence) to potential bidders in the final stages, a list of clients was revealed - that would probably have shown that a lot of the UK-based SVS clients (the clients the bidders would want) were already clients!  For example, as SVS clients of some years, my partner & I are already clients of AJBell, H-L, HSDL/IWeb & Jarvis - "buying" our SVS account would bring them precious little new business.

Further, the big brokers could have calculated, probably correctly, that most of the ex-SVS clients would jump ship from the "new broker" and transfer to an existing large broker.  This would cost them no more than the usual cost of registering new clients and without the headache of migrating thousands of SVS clients.

So why did ITI bid?  Because they want to expand aggressively and they have deep pockets?  Their existing client base is small and appears to have a high proportion of clients from a specific region (ITI have offices in Moscow, Kazhkstan and Cyprus).

*My2penneth has posted that one of the two short-listed bidders was excluded by FCA, leaving just ITI, but this hasn't been confirmed officially.  If true, then LC had only one choice:  ITI or restart the bidding process.

Nbs222

just received email from ITI

Dear Sir/Madam,

A number of SVS clients have called in enquiring about the initial account opening email that has yet to be receive. In order for us to gauge the delivery/receipt of this communication, in the first instance please could you  kindly review your ‘Junk/Spam’ folder.

To date we have received confirmation of a 90% delivery rate to our initial email and we would like to apologise to all SVS clients who are yet to receive our communication, as we are now reviewing the contact details of these clients and will resend this communication with the completion of the contact detail validation exercise.

We are also aware of a number of other issues which has been raised and we are in process of resolving these points:

Some account balances by default are showing in USD only, whilst we do readily offer multi-currencies we will ensure that your primary currency (GBP) is correct.    

Multiple client accounts are not intra linked against the client name, we are currently mapping all client accounts against each client (natural person).

Additional account functionality will be given to all clients, whereby you will be able to register for an additional account(s) using the same email.

Please note we are still in the process of transferring securities on to ITI client accounts, as our approach for security transfers (subject to reconciliation) is line by line.

On receipt of the auto generated login and password, we would suggest you copy and paste the password at the login stage, as these are encrypted passwords and often manual input of an encrypted password can often cause an error at logging. (if you have a persistent logging error please do not send your details to us as part of your query).  

We would like to assure you that all client assets/cash balances are completely segregated from ITI Capital in accordance with the provisions of the FCA CASS rules and requirements.   Please refer to our Terms of Business, which clearly explains the CASS requirements for the protection and security of consumers.   

We appreciate your patience during this period and are doing everything possible to create a better trading environment for you. We will provide you with a further update on Monday morning.

 

My2penneth

I asked LC what I thought was a simple question! 

Sir,

Of the 20,000 or so accounts migrated to ITI, do we know how many are fully up and trading? 

I started the on boarding procedure on Friday, one week ago, and the account is still frozen. 

I saw the update of the 28th July but I inform you that my wife has not yet received an invitation to start the process.

Yours in frustration 

Thank you for your email.

 We have requested details from ITI regarding the on-boarding process and would hope for an update shortly. The information we have at hand suggests that several thousand clients are yet to receive their log –in details. This is apparently due to the IT problems being encountered this week. We understand that ITI will be contacting all clients today with a further update. I have not seen this but the suggestion was that the system would be shut down, upgraded and rebooted through out today in order to address the various issues . I apologise for the inconvenience and frustration caused .

My2penneth

Update from ITI Capital

Dear Sir/Madam,

A number of SVS clients have called in enquiring about the initial account opening email that has yet to be receive. In order for us to gauge the delivery/receipt of this communication, in the first instance please could you  kindly review your ‘Junk/Spam’ folder.

To date we have received confirmation of a 90% delivery rate to our initial email and we would like to apologise to all SVS clients who are yet to receive our communication, as we are now reviewing the contact details of these clients and will resend this communication with the completion of the contact detail validation exercise.

We are also aware of a number of other issues which has been raised and we are in process of resolving these points:

Some account balances by default are showing in USD only, whilst we do readily offer multi-currencies we will ensure that your primary currency (GBP) is correct.    

Multiple client accounts are not intra linked against the client name, we are currently mapping all client accounts against each client (natural person).

Additional account functionality will be given to all clients, whereby you will be able to register for an additional account(s) using the same email.

Please note we are still in the process of transferring securities on to ITI client accounts, as our approach for security transfers (subject to reconciliation) is line by line.

On receipt of the auto generated login and password, we would suggest you copy and paste the password at the login stage, as these are encrypted passwords and often manual input of an encrypted password can often cause an error at logging. (if you have a persistent logging error please do not send your details to us as part of your query).  

We would like to assure you that all client assets/cash balances are completely segregated from ITI Capital in accordance with the provisions of the FCA CASS rules and requirements.   Please refer to our Terms of Business, which clearly explains the CASS requirements for the protection and security of consumers.   

We appreciate your patience during this period and are doing everything possible to create a better trading environment for you. We will provide you with a further update on Monday morning.

Sheris

leonde said:

johnburman said:

Leonde. A Google alert is useful to tell you when something has happened but it will not give you advanced notice. As an aside I am surprised to read of the low levels of protection given in certain EU countries. Euro 20k is far too small. I think the 85k GBP limit here is too low. The higher the limit the more incentive the regulators have to keep an eye on those they are regulating. 

SVS were investigated prior to 2018, so such an event could act as a red flag. Although the reality is that I would probably have ignored it if I had known - but last year's experience has probably made me a lot more wary.

Many red flags even HMRC before, how many more people after 2018 continued to invest there hard earned money into the SVS blackhole, not knowing.