SVS Securities - shut down?

masonic

johnburman said:

This could form a benchmark for the FOS perhaps? Especially as the FOS award very little for non pecuniary loss 

The FOS won't adopt any court precedence. They have their own internal process and compensation scales. Small claims track is as far as I'm aware a bit more of a gamble when it comes to compensation for distress and inconvenience, with a higher burden of evidence, but quite possible that you could get a better outcome if your arguments are compelling enough. I certainly wouldn't want to encourage someone to take that risk when an assured level of compensation could be obtained via FOS, but it would be interesting to compare and contrast.

eskbanker

RasputinB said:

eskbanker said:

your quoted comment presumably comes from correspondence you've received from FOS, but what supports your view about automatic escalation?

1. Working together to proactively settle complaints – an update on our outcome codes initiative (financial-ombudsman.org.uk)
2. I just thought it might make sense to tell a company that if it uses the "outcome codes initiative" but fails to respond within reasonable deadlines then the FOS could escalate to an ombudsman (with associated costs to the company?). 

Interesting - I wasn't aware of that initiative, but still don't see anything suggesting that it would involve automatic ombudsman escalation, especially when its raison d'etre seems to be to temporarily allow a shortened process to deal with a backlog.

As you say, the temporary initiative compromises transparency by virtue of introducing an additional neutral outcome, although the consultation document and the response accept this and suggest some mitigating measures - however, as mentioned in previous posts, there never seem to be enough ITI complaints to trigger inclusion on the firm-specific data published by the FCA, so there isn't really any sort of benchmark as to their FOS uphold rates anyway!

RasputinB

johnburman said:

All very interesting but how do you get more compensation?

If you have a separate distinctive complaint, or complaints, you could hope to get compensation for each. But if you have already accepted compensation on a "full and final" basis and weren't very specific about the particular complaint then chances are that won't work.
And you may want to factor in your time. It seems to me that any ex SVS client can get £250 without much work. But if you expect £400 I think you'll find that ITI will dig their heels in and the FOS is unlikely to help you much unless you can show that you actually suffered a quantifiable loss. If you can do that you could try court action but the point eskbanker has made (a few times) is that you'd be unlikely to obtain any more than you would through the FOS.
But if you want to spend some interesting time I'd recommend looking at Russia Archive and searching the Internet for background on the Da Vinci money!

RasputinB

eskbanker said: there never seem to be enough ITI complaints to trigger inclusion on the firm-specific data published by the FCA

Yet it was reported that well over a thousand Data Subject Access Requests were received by the administrators.
There were plenty of complaints made! I've never used a claim management company but I am beginning to think that I should have.
Is it possible to make a comparison between the amount of compensation that CMCs obtained for ex SVS clients and the amount through the FOS? So far the transparency of the FOS allows us to see what? £550?

[Edited to add that complaints and claims made against SVS aren't comparable with those against ITI. What I'm getting at is the different approach and the different handling of claims, and I suspect a much bigger payout to clients of the former company.]

eskbanker

There are two public domain datasets pertaining to firm-specific complaints data that I'm aware of - the FOS referrals are discussed at https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/78790224/#Comment_78790224

There is also a separate set of FCA data relating to complaints at a gross level, i.e. including those dealt with by the firm without escalation to FOS, i.e. the overwhelming majority, so the threshold here is 500 per six month period rather than the 30 for the FOS ones.

I haven't seen any ITI complaints within these published datasets, which either means that the volumes aren't high enough to qualify or perhaps that ITI haven't been updating the FCA....

In terms of quantum, I don't know of anything made public other than individual FOS final decisions - is anyone aware of any reliable data on this?

RasputinB

eskbanker said:

I haven't seen any ITI complaints within these published datasets, which either means that the volumes aren't high enough to qualify or perhaps that ITI haven't been updating the FCA....

Thanks for that information.
I note that the FSCS gave an update today to say that they are still on the case of their continuing investigations into SVS. They say that they expect to give another update shortly. The previous update was in August 2020.

RasputinB

According to Rule DISP 1.3.1 of the FCA Handbook “Effective and transparent procedures for the reasonable and prompt handling of complaints must be established, implemented and maintained”.

In the Financial Ombudsman Decision DRN2145369 (relating to a different stockbroker) £300 compensation was awarded for the distress and inconvenience caused by the delay in the transfer of the account to a new broker and a further £100 for the delay in dealing with the complaint. Other Financial Ombudsman Decisions also show compensation for delays in dealing with complaints.

It looks to me like the FOS should be awarding a minimum of £100 to ITI clients just for delays in handling complaints.

RasputinB

According to my web browser the certificate for iticapital.com is not valid. It states that "Because this connection is not secure, information (such as passwords or credit cards) will not be securely sent to this site and may be intercepted or seen by others" and "We suggest you don't enter personal information into this site or avoid using this site".​
(I think this justifies a separate complaint!)

masonic

RasputinB said:

According to my web browser the certificate for iticapital.com is not valid. It states that "Because this connection is not secure, information (such as passwords or credit cards) will not be securely sent to this site and may be intercepted or seen by others" and "We suggest you don't enter personal information into this site or avoid using this site".​
(I think this justifies a separate complaint!)

It expired Wed, 04 May 2022 12:54:34 GMT. Not very impressive.

eskbanker

RasputinB said:

According to Rule DISP 1.3.1 of the FCA Handbook “Effective and transparent procedures for the reasonable and prompt handling of complaints must be established, implemented and maintained”.

In the Financial Ombudsman Decision DRN2145369 (relating to a different stockbroker) £300 compensation was awarded for the distress and inconvenience caused by the delay in the transfer of the account to a new broker and a further £100 for the delay in dealing with the complaint. Other Financial Ombudsman Decisions also show compensation for delays in dealing with complaints.

It looks to me like the FOS should be awarding a minimum of £100 to ITI clients just for delays in handling complaints.

But at what point would it be considered that the handling of a complaint had been delayed enough to warrant that?  Obviously there is the eight-week longstop date after which complaints can be escalated from the institution to FOS, so resolution within eight weeks is implicitly acceptable, but if the mere act of escalating after eight weeks was viewed as a delay justifying compensation then practically every FOS case would generate that payment, which seems an unlikely prospect.  Once a complaint has been referred to FOS, the institution can effectively down tools (to the extent that they'd ever got round to picking them up!) as the timescales are then driven by FOS, so the clock wouldn't seem to be ticking from that point....

The cited case above doesn't seem to explain the actual complaint handling timescales, just the transaction delays, but it reads like it was Barclays themselves who unilaterally chose to offer the £100 rather than this being imposed by FOS, who also proposed the £300 distress and inconvenience on the basis that there were two people who were inconvenienced, while agreeing that £200 would have been more appropriate for for just one:

I have considered what amount should be paid for distress and inconvenience. Barclays offered £200 for the impact of the delay. I think that is a reasonable amount if only Mr E was complaining. But I’m mindful that this is a joint complaint, and although Mr E has been responsible for corresponding with Barclays I’m not satisfied that distress and inconvenience wasn’t caused to both of them because of the delay. I think a total of £300 is a reasonable amount in the circumstances. Barclays also offered a further £100 for the delay in dealing with the complaint.

Anyway, just food for thought and/or discussion - do you have DRNs for the other cases you refer to?