SVS Securities - shut down?

rebea

I am new to this forum, having only found it this morning.
After many attempts I managed to fulfil the onboarding process on 7 August.
Since then have not been able to log into the client portal and have not received any confirmation or Phoenix login info.
No meaningful responses to emails to ITI....
I have constantly been hustling the JSAS, as they are responsible for this whole mess..but of course getting nowhere with them, just vague promises that they are chasing things up !!!
I have officially complained to the ITI Compliance Team, not that it will do any good.
I have contacted the FCA and have an automated Case number but nothing else yet.
Have also complained to the FOS but expect a long wait there.
And of course the FSCS assure me that the investments and cash are secure,, No real help there.
Hoping that the FCA will be forced to step in.
Will post any follow up as it happens or not...
Any further advice from anyone would be most welcome.
Good fortune to all.
Rebea
Just as I was going to post this I had this reply to my mornings email to the JSAS.
but of course no further response from ITI..

 

""Thank you for your email, and I am sorry that you have yet to hear from ITI.  At a meeting today we were given to understand that ITI Capital now have 15 members of staff in account management. They are being split into sections dealing with specific tasks such as on-boarding, transfers, trading accounts  and cash withdrawals.

Unfortunately I am not able to give specific timescales on when outstanding requests will be actioned by ITI but would assume that with the increase in manpower that this will speed things up considerably. As far as we are aware only a handful of trading accounts are currently live but we have been assured that this will increase significantly over the coming days.

 

In the meantime I will resend your original request with a note that this is long outstanding and should be dealt with urgently.""

My2penneth

15 members of staff (including ex SVS staff (5) on temp contracts who can't help because ITI won't give them access to Phoenix).

Let's work with the 15 though.....15 staff split between 4 major tasks. let's say 4 people per task rounding up!  4 people to transfer 20,000 accounts line by line, manually, to their Phoenix system......  

johnburman

They need 150 not 15

Danie6

manted said:

Danie6 said:

Also lodged a complaint with FCA today. Case ref# 206863792. If everybody send their complaints they must surely do something.

Is this compliant for the cash portion of your account ? I understand from your previous posts that you are the only person who has been able to transfer out to Interactive Brokers ..

Yes, for the cash. The shares are sorted. I have adopted the habit of sending them a request for my cash every day. I have now already sent 10 requests and received zero response and told the FCA I suspect fraud. FCA said I must give them two days. So let us see what they come up with.

Nbs222

For transfers received they should not waste time setting up Phoenix accounts

johnburman

2 days for cash out. My request is 10 old and so far not a word from them on the cash. 

Monsieur_Bourse

Thanks for the e-mail address for the FCA John.

My advice to anyone who has still not received your cash out of ITI or even a response to your e-mails, when sending your e-mail to their customer services department in the subject box write in capital letters:

COMPLAINT TO BE MADE TO THE FINANCIAL OMBUDSMAN

This worked both for myself and my wife, in my case I received a response withing 10 minutes, and my wife within 3 hours. The cash was transferred out to our respective accounts the same day.

gibson81

For those transferring out, has anyone actually received a response from their broker that ITI have acknowledged the request?
I initiated mine at the start of the month and it is now nearly September. Still nothing....

rnf11

gibson81 said:

For those transferring out, has anyone actually received a response from their broker that ITI have acknowledged the request?
I initiated mine at the start of the month and it is now nearly September. Still nothing....

Received a letter from IWeb this morning, stating that ITI Capital had not responded to them - after three weeks have passed.

It states that the process is that IWeb have to get a valuation from ITI Capital, and then the transfer itself begins, taking two or three  weeks to complete.

What we know so far:

          - ITI Capital's on screen valuations are fantasy

           - ITI Capital have three or four people to handle a paper based process for, at a guess,    say 5,000  ex SVS clients.

So, do the math....

Where's the popcorn?

Researcher16

Researcher16 said:

I haven’t posted before but I have been reading the comments on this forum since the outset.  I am very grateful for the shared information as, like others have mentioned, this has been a very stressful process made less so by the shared experiences.  

In my household we had three accounts with SVS (held by me, husband and son), not great sums (although significant to us) as mostly our shares were savings held for dividend income whilst bank interest rates are low. 

Our experiences (good and bad) so far:

My account: login details provided and onboarding started on 24th July.  I was anxious about the insecure and poorly worded site and sent an email to accountmanagement@iticapital.com as follows “I am being asked several questions at the outset that I don't see the need for and there are misspellings such as "Pensionor Goverment Benifits" (each of those 3 words is misspelt). The login website also seems insecure.”  I never received a reply but after seeing messages on this forum, I went ahead and uploaded documents.  This required both passport and driving licence for photo id.  When I tried to upload a selfie using my phone, I had an error message when going to the link provided by the ITI website as others experienced.  I managed to provide a selfie instead using my laptop camera. The onboarding then progressed without further delay.

On 27th July I downloaded the ITI cash withdrawal form as a pdf.  I was able to fill this in using the fill and save option in adobe reader (free) and I emailed this form to them so no need for printer or scanner. The cash appeared in my bank account on 31st July.

I have applied for the transfer of all my shares by posting a transfer request form to my other broker (Equiniti).  Equiniti have confirmed the request and they will manage the transfer process.  I shall update when this is complete.  I have used this broker for a few years (ironically, I transferred most of my shares from Equiniti to SVS when Equniti introduced a custody fee).  Their transaction fees are £12.50 and their custody fee is based on % value of shares up to a maximum of £40 per year.  However, I have found them to be reliable and to respond to enquiries promptly.

Husbands account: uploading straightforward around the same time using the benefit of my document uploading experience.  He received an email yesterday stating “Your Phoenix account application has been received and is currently processing”

Son’s account: subject to the long delay others have experienced, finally provided with login details email (with a better explanation of the process) on 2nd August.  He is away at the moment so unable to complete the onboarding as phone selfies still seem to be unacceptable.

Update:

My broker, Equiniti, initiated my shares transfer request more than 3 weeks ago.  Today Equiniti sent me a message "To date, we have not received a response to our transfer request from your current provider. We would be obliged if you could therefore contact them to establish if any further information is required from you which may have delayed their response to the transfer request.”

My son’s account still has a status of “on-boarding submitted” and a request for cash withdrawal from his account 10 days ago has still not been fulfilled.