Please help, cannot collect pension pot without form signing!!!

Keep_pedalling

ZingPowZing wrote: »

No, mgdavid, I was just providing some balance counter to the assumption that the client doesn't know what is best for him until a financial adviser informs him.

I think I read somewhere
" we are intelligent people and know exactly what we are doing"

Good luck yourself!

Although having a long term plan to cash in a pension to pay off the mortgage when there are far better options would suggest otherwise.

Thrugelmir

ZingPowZing wrote: »

Which is a joke. The general public don't need financial advisers, or at least the paint-by-numbers financial advice they churn out; they only need a route to take control of their financial future.

Seems you are the one out of touch with reality.

SonOf

ZingPowZing wrote: »

I have met with a few FA’s and all of them will not sign this off without taking control of all of my other pension pots which I don’t want.

How do Financial Advisers reconcile Blackavar's experience with the principle of Independent Advice- if that signifies fair and disinterested advice?

FAs are restricted. They are not IFAs.

Bowlhead has given an excellent detailed answer but I will summarise. If you went to Aviva, would you expect them to place the business with Standard Life and sign to say that they have both provided advice and take on the liability for recommending both Standard Life and the investments held by them.

No. It would not be logical. That is how you need to think of HL. Yes, they could sign to say they have given advice on the DB transfer. However, they have not given advice on the provider or the investments. So, if the third party declaration only requires confirmation that advice was given on the DB transfer then that is fine. If it requires confirmation that advice was given on the provider and investments as well then it is not fine because advice was not given in those areas. It would be a lie to say it was and one that could actually result in the FCA shutting the company down or PI insurers withdrawing cover and without PI insurance, you get shut down.

Today, providers distribute direct to consumer or via an intermediary. Most of the intermediary providers will only accept business via an intermediary and that intermediary has to place it via their agency and confirm they gave advice. Some will only accept business on a positive recommendation to transfer and their declaration will state that.

A restricted FA that only retails their own products will not have agencies open for new business with other providers. So, they cannot sign a declaration that is not correct.

The key is in the wording of the declaration.
It also needs to be full advice and not cut down cheaper initial guidance rubbish that you paid for.

For goodness' sake, steampower, they know what they want to do! They are probably more intelligent than any adviser they are obliged to hire. What they want to do is exercise their freedom to decide, as enshrined in the pension freedom act.

Steampowered is absolutely correct. There are things the OP has said which suggest that the transaction they want to do is not the best thing. Even if they want it as a lump sum, taking it all in one go is not likely to be best. And its a transaction that is extremely high risk and not one that any sensible FA or IFA would want to take on if the person is close minded on the options.

We are doing our PI insurance renewal at the moment and all the PI quote forms ask the question whether advice has been given to disregard a GAR and take the benefits flexibly. You have to give a summary of the advice in each case as to the reasons and justifications. What the OP wants is something that would see an adviser paying extra on their PI insurance forevermore. Each and every year for the remaining time the company is open, they will be paying for this piece of advice. So, it wouldnt be cheap as an adviser fee. And when the breakeven point of the GAR is measured, its likely to be short (often under 10 years). The tax would be heavy taking it all in one go. The OP is not retired and still has another 6 years to go until retiring. So, plenty of time to a) reduce the mortgage balance (Which is likely to have less interest on it than the investment returns on the pension) and b) more time to pay into the pension to push the value up and then pay the residual mortgage balance from the 25% TFC. So, the GAR vs full withdrawal is likely to be a very poor financial decision.

[Deleted User]

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Seems you are the one out of touch with reality.

Slight recourse to exaggeration on my part. I'll make general apology for that rather than delete it.

[Deleted User]

SonOf wrote: »

FAs are restricted. They are not IFAs.

Bowlhead has given an excellent detailed answer but I will summarise. If you went to Aviva, would you expect them to place the business with Standard Life and sign to say that they have both provided advice and take on the liability for recommending both Standard Life and the investments held by them.

No. It would not be logical. That is how you need to think of HL. Yes, they could sign to say they have given advice on the DB transfer. However, they have not given advice on the provider or the investments. So, if the third party declaration only requires confirmation that advice was given on the DB transfer then that is fine.

A restricted FA that only retails their own products will not have agencies open for new business with other providers. So, they cannot sign a declaration that is not correct.

.

Thanks both to bowlhead and Son Of for fulsome replies.

With respect to Hargreaves Lansdown, this is the dec the adviser refused to sign:

For completion by the Pension Transfer Specialist

Except for Guaranteed Annuity Rates, where a transfer is being paid from a scheme offering certain guarantees (also called "safeguarded benefits") the Pension Transfer Specialist should complete and sign the section below in all cases

Pension Transfer Specialist Name
FCA Individual Reg No

1. Did you recommend the safeguarded transfer(s) in this form? YES NO
2. If no to 1. above, have you advised against the transfer in writing (including having carried out a full analysis as required by the FCA rules) and have you recorded this as an insistent customer? YES NO

Pension Transfer Specialist signature
Date

Truth to tell, the adviser never even looked at what he refused to sign.

xylophone

Sorry to say, Blackavar, the FO will most likely just confirm the status quo.

Blackavar's position is rather more complex than his post above suggests.

See https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6026867/section-32-pension-about-to-close-what-to-do

bowlhead99

ZingPowZing wrote: »

With respect to Hargreaves Lansdown, this is the dec the adviser refused to sign:


1. Did you recommend the safeguarded transfer(s) in this form? YES NO
2. If no to 1. above, have you advised against the transfer in writing (including having carried out a full analysis as required by the FCA rules) and have you recorded this as an insistent customer? YES NO

For 2, an insistent customer is where that client wants to do a transaction different from what the adviser recommended and wishes the adviser to facilitate the transaction. When an adviser executes a transaction for a client that's not in line with their advice, they have to provide certain communications to the customer and get a declaration from the customer on file and complete the documentation to FCA standards.

However, in HL's case they did not want to execute / facilitate a transaction for the client once the advice has been given that the client should not go ahead. Then perhaps they don't need to record you as an insistent customer, as they are not doing something for you against their advice. So having said 'no' to point 1, they wouldn't say 'yes' to point 2 either, and the transaction would stop. IIRC from the other thread: they had already told you that if they advised against it they would not help you do the transaction or find a pension firm to work with, although they would give you a declaration of advice that you could show to a pension business that you had identified for yourself.

They gave you the declaration of advice and it wasn't enough to satisfy the pension business that you had identified, due to the inflexibility of that pension business not wanting to read HL's declaration of advice. HL had no interest in recording you as an insistent client and helping you do a transaction, just like the new pension firm had no interest in reading the written declaration of advice from HL because the pension firm preferred to demand that their own specific form to be completed.

Your failure to find a pension firm that would act for you, or the lack of willingness on the part of your favoured firm to accept HL's declaration that they had advised you on a proposed transfer, is not HL's fault really - which is why your Ombudsman complaint about HL failed.

Truth to tell, the adviser never even looked at what he refused to sign.

He had probably seen it before, or one like it from another firm, and knew that it would be asking him to acknowledge that he was helping an insistent client carry out a transaction and had fully documented the insistent client matters. As HL's policy in this area is not to help people carry out a transaction against advice, there was no point in him looking at it before politely declining. He just gave you a written declaration that he provided advice, and left it up to you to find a pensions firm that would be happy to proceed with that not-positive advice as documented by HL.

SonOf

1. Did you recommend the safeguarded transfer(s) in this form? YES NO
2. If no to 1. above, have you advised against the transfer in writing (including having carried out a full analysis as required by the FCA rules) and have you recorded this as an insistent customer? YES NO

I would have a problem to the second part highlighted if I was a restricted FA offering own product only.
As the person is not going into HL's own product, and they cannot place business with third party providers, then they cannot agree to that they have recorded them as an insistent client.

So, this is a fault of the declaration being asked to sign. It is asking for something that is not being provided. Looks like the wording from an intermediary provider rather than a direct to the consumer provider.

[Deleted User]

Son Of states " if the third party declaration only requires confirmation that advice was given on the DB transfer then that is fine." He also states that advisers are obliged to sign such declarations.

Hargreaves Lansdown did not comply with that guidance.

The HL proposition is that an insistent client can make his own arrangements to transfer in the face of a negative recommendation. Otherwise nobody would buy their proposition.

[Deleted User]

If HL won't record a client as an insistent client then how and with whom can that client facilitate a transfer?