SVS Securities - shut down?

t237

Has anyone succesfully transferred out recently? I'm getting concerned by the complete silence from all parties, including regulators.

rnf11

t237 said:

Has anyone succesfully transferred out recently? I'm getting concerned by the complete silence from all parties, including regulators.

Yes, except for the cash - which is an almost universal sticking point.

rnf11

Surely this is now getting to point that Police need to be involved? By not letting us transfer our cash it must be breaking criminal laws, never mind financial regulations? 

At least one person on here, some while back, has said they have reported this matter to Actionfraud.

Jamesram

rnf11 said:

Surely this is now getting to point that Police need to be involved? By not letting us transfer our cash it must be breaking criminal laws, never mind financial regulations? 

At least one person on here, some while back, has said they have reported this matter to Actionfraud.

Unfortunately the Theft Act 1968 requires the complainant to prove "an intention to permanently deprive", not just delay payment. I am not aware of any other criminal statute that would assist. On the civil law side of things I am waiting to enter judgment in default of a defence to my money claim for a divi payment. 2 November is the date, following which I can "put the Bailliffs in", or require a named officer of the company to attend an enquiry from a court official or possibly a district judge as to how payment of the judgment debt is to be met, amongst other "remedies".

On the other hand Monsieur Bourse got a fast result from threatening police action (see his post above), so well done to him. Looks like ITI's ignorance of the law is no excuse  for them not to cough up when threatened!

Jamesram

Theft Act 1968 Section 6(1)  "A person appropriating property belonging to another without meaning the other permanently to lose the thing itself is nevertheless to be regarded as having the intention of permanently depriving the other of it if his intention is to treat the thing as his own to dispose of regardless of the other’s rights; and a borrowing or lending of it may amount to so treating it if, but only if, the borrowing or lending is for a period and in circumstances making it equivalent to an outright taking or disposal."

Property includes money. ITI would have to be "borrowing or lending" your money for its own purposes, and even then it would seem that such borrowing or lending would have to be for such a lengthy period that it would be tantamount to "outright taking or disposal" AND of course, the burden of proof still falls on the prosecutor.

This delay and deprivation of our cash is taking place within the Client Accounts, not ITI's own company  accounts (I assume and trust!). If it were otherwise, I guess there could be a good case for a theft prosecution applying section 6(1), but there is no evidence of that being the situation.

snipkin

I suddenly noticed last week that the cash balance in my ITI 'Qort' ISA account (approx £3,000) had been withdrawn on 13 October - I had not looked at it for a while as I was tired of the usual 'nothing happened' scenario. I checked my HL ISA account where I am transferring to (all my shares are there already) but the cash had not turned up there. So then I checked my bank account but it was not there either (luckily, because I want it to retain its ISA tax status).

So yesterday I phoned ITI on its website number and - presumably? - got through to that South African phone answering service (mentioned on this forum previously) and they were no use at all - could not help me - but they gave me another number to ring and requested my name and ITI account number (perhaps for their records?).

I rang the other number - supposedly 'a direct line to Account Management' (020 7562 8015) - which was answered within seconds by a pleasant gentleman ('Mani') who spent some time with me on the phone checking what had happened. He sent a query email to the ITI transfer team and suggested I phone HL to check if the delay was at their end.

So, I phoned HL. Note that I had to wait at least 15 minutes before HL answered the phone - ITI beat them hands down on telephone answering on this occasion!!! They looked into my query and later the money suddenly appeared in  my HL account and they had no explanation about why it had had taken 9 business days (since 13 October) to appear. For once, perhaps, the delay was not due to ITI although, of course, the larger delay since 24 July totally was.

Therefore, my ISA account transfer to HL is now complete except for perhaps for a dividend or two (I have not checked this in detail yet) which I guess will feed through in due course.

My ITI non-ISA account has almost totally transferred to Jarvis XO now except for $400 which remains stubbornly stuck in my ITI 'Qort' account (a quarterly dividend paid in dollars from Diversified Gas & Oil). I also raised this with Mani at ITI yesterday on the phone and he fired off another email to the ITI transfer team about it - I've not heard anything about that yet.

johnburman

Just put my complaint in to the Ombudsman, My fear is that ITI are on the brink of going bust themselves!
But the FSCS will cover them up to £85k. 

The FOS will take 6 months min to deal with this.  Wonder if all our complaints ot them could be joined together and agreed together? 

Civil action is the way forward for shares/dividends not paid or transferred. 

shiznit76

Would think that if they are getting so many complaints all of a sudden about one company that they have previously had very little dealing with alarm bells would be ringing

Jamesram

johnburman said:

Just put my complaint in to the Ombudsman, My fear is that ITI are on the brink of going bust themselves!
But the FSCS will cover them up to £85k. 

The FOS will take 6 months min to deal with this.  Wonder if all our complaints ot them could be joined together and agreed together? 

Civil action is the way forward for shares/dividends not paid or transferred. 

On the point of ITI potentially going bust, I contacted FSCS to ask whether they would pay out on an FOS Compensation Award. After being fobbed off with inadequate info twice, I did finally get a very lengthy email which I won't set out here but will retain, which gives a lot of "ifs and buts"  but does seem to conclude that the FSCS will cover a Civil Liability owed by ITI and that a Civil Liability does include an unpaid Ombudsman Award.

But there is another issue- is a settlement in FOS proceedings, or compensation agreed through an FOS case handler, technically a Civil Liability in the same way that a full Ombudsman Award is? I don't know the answer yet- again its all wretchedly technical and there has been case law. The only solace is that there is a right to ask the Ombudsman her/hiself to make a  final determination, I understand, from a finding of the claim assessor,and so that award would definitely be a Civil Liability.

I resisted posting about this when I got full info from FSCS afew days ago Thought it a bit premature, but now people have mentioned the "ITI bust" possibility more than once I felt it should be considered. If anyone wants to see the full response they can message me and I wil send it. Otherwise I am just at this stage setting out the position  that apparently the FSCS will cover an FOS award if ITI goes bust. Probably.

eskbanker

shiznit76 said:

Would think that if they are getting so many complaints all of a sudden about one company that they have previously had very little dealing with alarm bells would be ringing

The subject of the volume of ITI complaints escalated to FOS was discussed earlier this month in this thread, and in particular "FTAdviser understands the ombudsman has received about 10 complaints about ITI Capital, but these are not necessarily in relation to SVS clients" - I was highlighting in a previous post that FOS received over 100,000 complaints in the most recent six month reporting period and that the most complained-about institution accounted for over 8,000 of these, so the notion that ITI complaint volumes are of any particular significance to FOS isn't supported by the facts....