SVS Securities - shut down?

johnburman

Sloth; unaware of the FOS; could be bothered; too embarrassed; too much effort for too little reward...they have a life to live; just thankful they can now access their life savings etc. etc. 


And i do not criticise them.  But it a justification for ITI not doing much about this 

eskbanker

johnburman said:

Sloth; unaware of the FOS; could be bothered; too embarrassed; too much effort for too little reward...they have a life to live; just thankful they can now access their life savings etc. etc. 

Probably worth bearing in mind that those knowledgeable enough to make risk-based investments via a broker some way off the mainstream are largely unlikely to be ignorant of the existence of an ombudsman, unless there's any evidence of significant misselling to naïve gullible punters who didn't know what they were getting into?

johnburman said:

And i do not criticise them.

Could have fooled me, you've been badgering them repeatedly in SHOUTY CAPITALS for ages!

johnburman said:

my impression is that VERY FEW ex clients have claimed. THAT IS BAD.

johnburman said:

complainants of ITI MUST complain to the FOS

etc, etc....

johnburman said:

But it a justification for ITI not doing much about this 

Who's to say that there's much left for them to do?  You can't have failed to notice the lack of traffic on this thread in recent times, compared to the peak activity when it appeared that substantial numbers of people were waiting to be reunited with their investments, so is there any evidence that there's any significant residual backlog?

RasputinB

Has everybody checked their Consolidated Taxation Advices from ITI Capital?

Mine show that they paid me less than they should have for USD dividends as the GBP amounts on the CTA are greater than the GBP amounts that I received from ITI.

I am keen to know if this is due to “asymmetric price slippage” for which FXCM Group (now ITI Capital) were fined by the FCA.

Can anybody report discrepancies the other way i.e. that they received more dividend than stated on their CTA?

RasputinB

eskbanker said:

johnburman said:

Sloth; unaware of the FOS; could be bothered; too embarrassed; too much effort for too little reward...they have a life to live; just thankful they can now access their life savings etc. etc. 

Probably worth bearing in mind that those knowledgeable enough to make risk-based investments via a broker some way off the mainstream are largely unlikely to be ignorant of the existence of an ombudsman, unless there's any evidence of significant misselling to naïve gullible punters who didn't know what they were getting into?

You have picked up on the fact that johnburman said that SVS clients might be unaware of the FOS but I think that your comments show a misunderstanding of the type of client who got caught up in this transfer mess. I was one of many who parked various shareholdings with SVS for their low-cost execution and nominee service. I made no risk-based investments via SVS Securities.

They provided a service that I was happy with and that had good administration. They were regulated by the FCA and their details in the FCA register (at that time) gave no cause for concern.

But the FCA subsequently acted on intelligence received about the assets in which SVS invested its clients’ money and pushed SVS into administration.

So what do you mean by “a broker some way off the mainstream”?

eskbanker

RasputinB said:

eskbanker said:

johnburman said:

Sloth; unaware of the FOS; could be bothered; too embarrassed; too much effort for too little reward...they have a life to live; just thankful they can now access their life savings etc. etc. 

Probably worth bearing in mind that those knowledgeable enough to make risk-based investments via a broker some way off the mainstream are largely unlikely to be ignorant of the existence of an ombudsman, unless there's any evidence of significant misselling to naïve gullible punters who didn't know what they were getting into?

You have picked up on the fact that johnburman said that SVS clients might be unaware of the FOS but I think that your comments show a misunderstanding of the type of client who got caught up in this transfer mess. I was one of many who parked various shareholdings with SVS for their low-cost execution and nominee service. I made no risk-based investments via SVS Securities.

They provided a service that I was happy with and that had good administration. They were regulated by the FCA and their details in the FCA register (at that time) gave no cause for concern.

But the FCA subsequently acted on intelligence received about the assets in which SVS invested its clients’ money and pushed SVS into administration.

So what do you mean by “a broker some way off the mainstream”?

Perhaps just semantics, but to me you did make risk-based investments via SVS Securities, i.e. shares you bought and/or held with them - the point was really in response to the reference to 'life savings', a term which is often used in 'sad face' tabloid articles about people being swindled out of their savings by being scammed into investing in something riskier than they realised.  I understand that there were some investments available through SVS that were more exotic than others, but the fundamental assertion was that anyone choosing to invest should inherently be regarded as more savvy than the average punter, and so IMHO more likely to be aware of FOS, unless there was some marketing operation akin to recent mini-bond scandals that tempted in the unsuspecting?.

The comment about a non-mainstream broker was really about the relative scale and profile of SVS versus the rest of the broker/platform market, but wasn't seeking to imply anything about their probity or quality, just that they were a very small player, and hence those investors choosing them are more likely to know what they were doing (again in the context of FOS awareness) than those who simply choose more prominent players like HL or Nutmeg from 'best buy' listings on sites like this.

However, I should reiterate that the post above was specifically contending that SVS investors were relatively likely to be aware of FOS, rather than criticising them in any way, so there's no need to be defensive!  As I recall from previous posts, you're well aware of FOS, for example, not that a sample size of one can be extrapolated....

jenwrendorset

johnburman said:

Sloth; unaware of the FOS; could be bothered; too embarrassed; too much effort for too little reward...they have a life to live; just thankful they can now access their life savings etc. etc. 


And i do not criticise them.  But it a justification for ITI not doing much about this 

John - I think you are right, many will take the attitude that complaining to the FOS and FCA is a complete hassle, time consuming, waste of time etc etc however if the standard of service is as appalling as we all experienced with ITI then it needs to be brought to the attention of those authorities who regulate the standards otherwise it will just continue and many others will face what we had to deal with.  Today I have received acknowledgement from the FOS for one of the three accounts of which complaints have been registered against, I'm advised that it is currently in the Admin team waiting to be passed to an Investigator - this complaint was submitted in early November 2020.  Another complaint has actually been assigned to an Investigator and the third is probably up 'in the cloud' or somewhere - I will tackle that later this week.  The three complaints lodged with the FCA receive an update every 4 weeks advising that they are still 'finalising my complaint' and it is taking longer than anticipated - I just hope I live long enough to see the outcome.

Happy Christmas to everyone who is left on this site, at least we are in a better place than we were last year.

johnburman

Remember you can complain internally to the FOS about the sloth of the way they deal with the complaints.  And you can also complain to the FCA about how they deal with your complaints (but that is much harder) 

eskbanker

jenwrendorset said:

John - I think you are right, many will take the attitude that complaining to the FOS and FCA is a complete hassle, time consuming, waste of time etc etc however if the standard of service is as appalling as we all experienced with ITI then it needs to be brought to the attention of those authorities who regulate the standards otherwise it will just continue and many others will face what we had to deal with.

The FOS performance problems are no secret - the board commissioned an independent review (including FCA input) and has now committed to an action plan to address the issues raised, both of which were published last week:

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/files/319444/independent-periodic-review-2021.pdf
https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/files/319445/action-plan-periodic-review-2021.pdf

johnburman

Don't hold your breath. The FOS has been slothful for ages. They now sort of recognise that. 

johnburman

Guys let's not be silly.

The comment about a non-mainstream broker was really about the relative scale and profile of SVS versus the rest of the broker/platform market, but wasn't seeking to imply anything about their probity or quality, just that they were a very small player, and hence those investors choosing them are more likely to know what they were doing (again in the context of FOS awareness) than those who simply choose more prominent players like HL or Nutmeg from 'best buy' listings on sites like this.

is partially correct. 

SVS were a small player.  They were as far as I knew a discount only 'simple' broker.  Yes, they had some fairly aggressive salesmen who wanted me to buy the most risky AIM stock. Other than that they were fine for my purposes.  They were cheap when compared to HL.  I was (and am) risk averse but I bought shares and ETFs. 

ITI were from the get-go a complex and very expensive specialist broker with Russian roots.  Just the sort of people I did not want and their business model was far away from SVS.  Had they been able to cope, they would have been unsuitable for me.  I was one of the first to request transfers away from ITI to other 'simple' brokers.  As we know they could not cope with the influx of clients and were VERY slow in processing transfers.

Rather than whinge, we should be complaining to the FCA and FOS.  The question is why did ITI want the 20k new clients, with the infrastructure they had, and the few increase in staff.  And why on earth did the FCA allow such transfer to take place?.