Payment to Financial Adviser from Trust Fund

mattiebrown

I will try and keep this brief.  We set up a Trust Fund for us when dad died, using a Financial Adviser (company).  Having satisfied ourselves that the gentleman we would be dealing with would be a good relationship, we invested our money into Skandia, which was 13 years ago.  However, this financial adviser passed away over 16 months ago.  He was a Director in the company.  We were advised about his passing, but was informed that nothing would change as such.  16 months on, we have not heard from anyone.  A letter was received from Reassure, which has taken on our investment, with some information, and so we tried to speak to our Adviser.  Bearing in mind that this company gets paid nearly £1000 pa for "looking after us" we became nervous as to what was going off.  A look on Companies House website shows they still have the late gentleman as a Director and it is still trading.  We have tried phoning, to no avail, only by chance last week getting his secretary by phoning another company in the building. She promised us that she would get someone to phone on the Wednesday of last week, which they did, to be told that "Ben" would be contacting us this Tuesday, which he didnt.  I have since phoned and left messages to ring back, but to no avail.  
How can I stop this payment going to this company annually, I have contacted Reassure, but I am still waiting on a reply.

eskbanker

A regulated advisory company will have a formal complaints process, so if you're unhappy with them then invoke that - do they have a website showing details?

mattiebrown

They used to, but that has now disappeared.  Telephone number rings out, goes to "O2" messaging services but no name, or phone number is unobtainable.

eskbanker

You can view old websites at https://web.archive.org/ but if phone contact isn't working then it would probably need to be a snail mail letter, preferably by recorded delivery. Is there anything of concern about the firm on the FCA register? https://register.fca.org.uk/s/

dunstonh

How can I stop this payment going to this company annually, I have contacted Reassure, but I am still waiting on a reply.

As it's a pre-2013 product, it may not be explicitly charged.  So, whilst you can ask for it to be stopped, it doesn't mean that the trust will receive the money.  Usually, the provider keeps it for themselves.   Only on post-2012 products are charged explicitly and must be in exchange for services.   Some products moved to explicit charging in advance of 2013.  So, it could be one of those.  Although the ones that Old Mutual sold to Reassure are frequently commission based rather than the ones they kept, which are explicitly charged.

Have you checked the FCA register to see if other advisers are registered with this company?    if he was the only adviser, then there may not be anyone in place yet to take over, and they may be arranging a locum.

I don't want this to sound like an excuse but a possible explanation. Almost every advice firm will be run off their feet when dealing with the tax year change over.  Things normally start to calm down around mid-May onwards.   So, if a locum has been asked to contact you, they may not have been able to allocate time yet.  (especially if the locum is unpaid.  you can guess where in the queue the locum will place client tasks which they are not getting paid for against client tasks they are).