SVS Securities - shut down?

snipkin

t237 said:

Michael_Reynolds said:

I lodged a formal complaint over the weekend about the behaviour of ITI Capital and Leonard Curtis with the London Stock Exchange. This morning I received tax certificate statements from Leonard Curtis for the years 2019/2020 and 2020/2021. The figures were correct for 2019/2020 but blatantly wrong for 2020/2021.The 2020/2021 statements show USD & GBP balances and no documented evidence that these balances were paid over to ITI Capital. I have repeatedly asked LC to provide final statements showing 0 balances on my three GBP, EUR & USD cash accounts which are conclusive evidence of all monies being transferred to ITI Capital. No date I have had no success in obtaining these final statements. In addition there are five missing dividends paid by on June 24th 2020 which should have been included but are MISSING. THIS IS FRAUD! The suggestion of  a march to ITI's offices is a great . Sadly I'm in Ausralia so I can't attend. I can't see any light at the end of this tunnel. We seem to be getting nowhere. It's a desperate situation. Noone seems to be protecting our interests!

I got my tax certificate statement for one account but not the ISA account which has most of my holdings in. I'm so dejected by everything about this saga.

I, too, received only my non-ISA account statement from Leonard Curtis. So I requested a statement of my ISA account from LC - even though my ISA account is not taxed I obviously need to check that all the dividends due to me have been accounted for so there is a good reason to have it for the virtually 12-month period of non-access while the administration process was ongoing.. LC fairly promptly replied by email with 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 (up to 24 July) statements of both my ISA and non-ISA accounts - which was nice.

LC's 'get in touch' form on their web page is ridiculous: any message you send them appears wholly in capital letters which is highly unreadable - but I guess that's their problem. I 'got in touch' with LC the other day by sending them a really long complaint pasted from a 2-page Word document into the tiny box on their web form which all appeared in capital letters !! Why can they not just give an easy to find email address??

My2penneth

Speaking with LC yesterday,  ITI were claiming 30k clients before SVS clients ( I too thought that ITI had gone from 10k to 30k by the simple addition of SVS accounts). 
These original 30k accounts were most likely FX traders and not your average investor ( like us).

rnf11

One other point I ran past the IWeb rep with last night.

I put it to him that there is an obvious corporate impact on Iweb and other brokers awaiting the receipts of all these delayed/obstructed transfers from ITIC. They are foregoing revenue which would accrue to them from their new clients, due to this paralysis.

It is clearly a constraint on trade, and therefore anti-competitive, which I why I raised the matter with the CMA last week (response awaited). The IWeb rep acknowledged this and said he would pass the point up the management chain.

I am, therefore, now also considering a suitable note to the CEO of LLoyds Bank Group (IWeb 's ultimate parent), since if they were to also weigh in they must surely have a lot more clout with the regulatory bodies than we as individuals.

Nbs222

ITI have now removed negative stock lines from SC accounts , but now many stock lines are missing in the SC accounts.

pafpcg

What do we want the oversight regulators, FCA, FOS, FSCS, LSE or whoever, to actually do? 

There is a nightmare scenario: ITI Capital itself goes into administration.  Imagine what might happen if LSE considers the claims that ITI has breached LSE rules and imposes sanctions.  ITI now has difficulties running its primary business.  ITI's funder decides that ITI is going to be a cash drain in the short-term and the adverse publicity makes it unlikely to be successful in the long-term - the funder pulls the plug and puts ITI into administration.  The FCA steps in and appoints another Special Administrator (but probably not LC).  But this time the administration process will take much longer than for SVS, because SVS failed in its advice to its advisory clients, despite its execution-only service being relatively problem-free: the systems running SVS were effective and the data-base of client holdings matched the assets held in the SVS nominee accounts (all bar a small number of incomplete transactions).  Thus we, the clients of SVS, were able to have confidence in LC's administration being able to preserve our holdings as soon as LC gave us access to the 'Client Portal' to check our holdings in preparation for a smooth transfer to another platform.

But I have serious doubts that a smooth administration of a failed ITI would be possible.  It seems that many of us have opened trading accounts with ITI and have traded the transferred assets.  If ITI's internal operations are as chaotic as has been claimed in posts in this forum, then it will be a much more arduous process to unravel all our holdings and successfully complete another administration process - it's unlikely to be as quick as twelve months!  Even those of us who opted to transfer-out without 'on-boarding' will be trapped in this lengthy administration process because ITI still holds our assets. 

So what's our best scenario?  If ITI were to accept some friendly advice from FCA to expand its resources to improve the processing of ex-SVS assets and allow those clients who wish to opt-out or leave would eventually have their assets transferred to another platform; those clients who wish to stay with ITI would do so.  ITI could then develop successfully or slide back into oblivion.

How can we achieve the best scenario and avoid the worst?  My suggestions are:

-  treat ITI with respect and consideration for ITI's position but not to overload them with repetitive demands & complaints and certainly not to abuse the staff;
-  encourage the regulators to monitor the situation but not to force a shut-down of ITI;
-  patience.

There is another suggestion but it's one which others may have perfectly valid reasons to disagree:  don't trade!  As someone who wanted not to do business with ITI and went straight to the option to transfer-out immediately, it's simple self-interest to see ITI concentrate on the transfer-out workload rather than setting-up Phoenix accounts and processing trades, especially if those trades might cause subsequent difficulties!

snipkin

johnburman said:

Finally i saw a post querying why all the complaints on the forum were from XO clients and not FX clients.
I can think of 2 reasons:
1   XO clients are based in the UK and the FX clients are in China/HK and may not know about the forum
2   FX clients are gettign the Rolls royce service from ITI whilst we are getting the TRABANT (or perhaps skateboard) service.  I said earler that ITI did not want the XO clients and I still believe that to be the case - that is why they under-resourced the entire transfer operation.

There was a news item about one month ago on thecommentator.com: "ITI Capital announces plans for new Forex trading proposition" which emphasises rather well how ITI are totally focused on the FX clients from SVS. They seem to have developed a whole new 'cutting edge' system for them. A few quotes (I cannot post web links)::

"In June 2020, ITI acquired the client book from SVS Securities, which was placed in Special Administration this time last year. Included as part of the acquisition were a group of FX clients, who will be benefitted by this new announcement.
"ITI has not begun onboarding the FX clients yet, but the company expects to do so when it has upgraded its FX service later this month. ITI will utilise MetaTrader 4 (MT4) forex trading platform, and the service will tailored to suit both retail clients and elected professional clients.
"The company will also provide client support for its Chinese clients, who make up a large proportion of the SVS client book. Foreign currencies have been hugely impacted by the current global pandemic, and ITI Capital has committed to improving their FX services so that clients can receive instant insight and access to their foreign exchange portfolio.
"Rahul Agarwal, Managing Director for private clients UK, told The Commentator: “ITI has always offered FX trading as a service to Elected Professional clients [...] As is with all of our services, our FX trading platform will be aided by cutting-edge technology, designed to offer clients invaluable insight into market trends, allowing them to make a more informed decision than ever." END QUOTE

Not much mention of us XO clients I note... FX is where they are concentrating all their resources - as johnburman says, I agree that ITI are not interested in the SVS XO clients at all. But ITI must treat us all within the regulatory framework that their membership of the London Stock Exchange requires of them and their treatment of us should not remain unchallenged. Alternatively, LC should have separated the SVS clients into XO and FX and dealt with them as the separate entities they are with very different needs - but I guess that was just too much hassle for the millions of pounds LC were paid.

rnf11

........... or ITIC finally accept they have bitten off far more than they can chew, that sorting out all the x-o assets could well take years (as someone else has recently posted). In which case would it not be better still if one(or more)  of the formal bodies leaned on ITIC such that they divested themselves of the x-o part (which some on here claim that they never really wanted anyway) to, say, a better rival by means of bid or otherwise.

But then you come back to the key question - what reputable outfit (keen on preserving that repute)  would want to take on this mess???

My2penneth

I'd take a different view on XO clients....once set up on Phoenix they might trade occasionally ( 2x per month) but their accounts are sitting there earning ITI 25bps or whatever the rate is. 

rnf11

A new ShareSoc forum has now been created to discuss matters concerning the SVS insolvency here:

<https://www.sharesoc.org/forums/forum/svs-client-action-group/>

https://www.sharesoc.org/forums/forum/svs-client-action-group/. Any new

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SteveJohnson56

After reading up on this thread all day yesterday 09:00-12:00 from page 217-345, very exhausting, may I thank all those who have contributed.
Three accounts, an Individual Trading account £40k cash, an ISA £30k cash and a Joint account. Three shareholdings

BP. BT.A CNE are about £10k across all three.

I did not want to transfer to ITI Capital but When I clicked 'No' when asked if I wanted to close the accounts I was

concerned that the ISA might lose its tax free wrapper. I reluctantly chose to on-board 

thinking the assets would be accessible online soon after. I could then initiate a transfer within three months(LARGE sigh!)

before the Custody Fee (25bps per annum) and ISA Management Fee kick in (30bps per annum, min £7.50 per quarter),  

There are 2 open Phoenix accounts linked to the 2 Individual accounts but at present nothing has been moved to

them after three weeks of waiting, ITI Capital stipulate one week. The Portal guide instructions and the ita capital faq

I believe was not emailed/accessible until later. 

A few questions if I may and answers would be much appreciated.

1) I don't recall SVS having a Custody Fee for a Trading account or ISA Management Fee is this correct?

2) Does the ITI Custody Fee only apply to Trading accounts not the ISA?

3) I don't wish to phone trade and not have any contract notes visible for days or trades not displayed in my accounts?

Am I to assume from 23 October 2020 the above fees will kick in even though vitually nobody has anything in their 

Phoenix accounts to trade/access online through ITI Capital since 23 July? 

(IMO the three months should be extended).  

4) Those that have either initiated a transfer out during the Portal onboard process or as myself are considering requesting

having their status reset, if this is initiated before Oct 23 2020 will they not be liable for the 

Custody Fee/Isa Management Fee or must the transfer be completed by the three month date to avoid this?

5) Will the full year and not a pro rata Custody Fee be charged even if we only have an account for one day past

October 23, ie £250 if you have £100k?

My2penneth/others may have touched on some of the above, maybe offer some more insight.

As we all no customer services is non existent.

Thanks