Is this unprofessional conduct or not?

Bear_keeper

In mid-2019 my wife & I decided to sort out our pensions; I had 2 DBs & my wife & I both had a Scottish Widow pot.  

Our objectives were:

Find an IFA from now until the end & possibly beyond who can guide us through the options we have & show us what’s best for us and why.

Consolidate all four pensions. My 3 and my wife’s into PP’s for us each.

Optimise our new pots so we can get the most tax free cash & available pension out of them & then leave as much as possible once were gone or before for our kids / grandchildren.

Our Plan:

1)   9-Oct 19     Talk to PensionWise

2) 12-Oct-19     Sent list of our questions to ten approved IFAs from a website that PensionWise had told us about.

3) 21-Oct-19     I requested CETV from my 2 DB pensions.

4) 5-8 Nov-19   Have face2face with three of above & choose one which we feel most comfortable.

1-4 happened & we chose the IFA who was attached to our old solicitors (retired) office & was willing to meet our objectives, but after a good start things did not progress as we expected & we had a growing feeling of mistrust as the costs rose with no real reason but the need for us to sign permission forms and to commit financially was ever present, new cost were added without discussion, the correct information was not forthcoming, this made us increasingly question the trust we had in them especially as there was delay by the DB pensions to give a guaranteed CETV although we already had the figures based at Oct 19 which in my view should have meant the IFA could have given us information as to what options we had and see which was best for us subject to no change in the guaranteed figures; Which there was not.

Jan 2020 still saw no real information coming from the IFA & there had been many small errors which made us question our trust in them & we were also preoccupied as my brother-in-law had been told his cancer was now terminal.

Various other incidents happened with the IFA which further reduced our trust in them & gave us a feeling of being time pressured into whatever their recommendation was! I also had to sign up to a platform as the CETV runout date was very near & but there was still no real information from the IFA to allow us to decide what to do & then after a further month of nothing we had a video meeting on the 2nd April 2020, eight days before my brother-in-law past away. The IFA in answer to several direct questions on what our options were etc., told us they would not take us through any options as it was “their 30 years’ experience” that would give us our best option they also informed at this meeting of a conflict of interest with the platform they signed me up to a month earlier & 4 days before the first DB transferred into it. This was the last straw.

We took this as confirmation that we could not trust them as they had ignored our main requirements and it was clear at that point they expected us to "accept what we were being given without question" which is the opposite of what we had required from them so we removed them as our IFA at the end of May 2020. Over the next couple of months we raised a complaint with the IFA & had discussions with senior people to resolve/understand what went wrong but they believed we were “trying to get things cheap”.

In Sep 2020 we started a formal complaint to FOS. This took over 20 months to get to a final decision and although the Ombudsman agreed with most of our complaint he did not “think it reasonable to uphold” our complaint although he made no reference to the FCA principles 1, 8 & 9 which we felt are the lion’s share of our complaint.

We have tried to keep this concise & we do hope you can give an unbiased view on our experiences & what if anything we may have missed or done wrong or as we believe the IFA has not been professional & is there an organisation that could say if we have a case against the IFA.

Our thanks in advance.

Dazed_and_C0nfused

We have tried to keep this concise & we do hope you can give an unbiased view on our experiences & what if anything we may have missed or done wrong or as we believe the IFA has not been professional & is there an organisation that could say if we have a case against the IFA.

So concise it's not really clear (to me at least) what you are hoping to achieve from all this?

MarkCarnage

I've read the Ombudsman's report. Not too difficult to find....

I think that to state that the Ombudsman agreed with most of the complaint is overstating things...the actual wording was that " there is some merit in the arguments made"....this is in relation to a couple of specific points.  There were some criticisms certainly, but I would classify these as 'soft' issues around communication process, and not all arising solely from the adviser themselves....there were a number of parties involved. 
They did note that the conflict of interest matter should have been disclosed earlier. 

In the context of whether the IFA has been 'unprofessional' the FoS findings would seem to suggest that at most this related to the disclosure issue and perhaps the 'softer' issues around communication and hence timing. However they didn't believe that the key information and recommendations were flawed which is probably what matters and hence not upheld. Given the FoS findings it's hard to see how there could be a case against the IFA. 

'Could do better' on the report card is quite a bit away from 'unprofessional'. 

sandsy

MarkCarnage said:

I've read the Ombudsman's report. Not too difficult to find....

Helpful!

Given the complexity of and complaints about DB transfer advice, quite a rarity to see FOS saying the advice was suitable, and that the firm provided clear reports and didn't pressurise them. Some areas for improvement but looks like the initial PensionWide enquiry and IFA market search largely paid off. 

[Deleted User]

Can’t comment on the specific case but in my book the advisor is NOT the decision-maker. So he has to provide and explain options and leave the decision with the client. 

“Trying to get things on the cheap” is a weird thing to say for a financial advisor. One has to pay what has been agreed to but other than that, trying to cut costs is what every investor should aim for. 

What exactly was the conflict of interest that they failed to disclose in a timely manner? Was the IFA getting some kind of payment from the broker?  Hardly “independent”.

Marcon

Bear_keeper said:

In Sep 2020 we started a formal complaint to FOS. This took over 20 months to get to a final decision and although the Ombudsman agreed with most of our complaint he did not “think it reasonable to uphold” our complaint although he made no reference to the FCA principles 1, 8 & 9 which we felt are the lion’s share of our complaint.

We have tried to keep this concise & we do hope you can give an unbiased view on our experiences & what if anything we may have missed or done wrong or as we believe the IFA has not been professional & is there an organisation that could say if we have a case against the IFA.

That organisation is FOS, and it has already given its view based on copies of all the correspondence, rather than a potted version just a few paragraphs long. Looking at the determination, it's hard to see why you still believe there is a case against the IFA: https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-2878486.pdf

I've included the link because the determination makes genuinely interesting reading for other users of this forum (and is of course in the public domain, so there is no breach of privacy or anything else to stop the link being shown here).

[Deleted User]

From FOS report:

The second conflict of interest highlighted by Mr and Mrs C relates to CHFP’s dealings with Transact, the company it recommended they should use for their future pension arrangements. It seems the vast bulk of CHFP’s clients end up using Transact. And that a number of its staff have shares in the business.

Stinks, doesn’t it? 

Linton

Deleted_User said:

From FOS report:

The second conflict of interest highlighted by Mr and Mrs C relates to CHFP’s dealings with Transact, the company it recommended they should use for their future pension arrangements. It seems the vast bulk of CHFP’s clients end up using Transact. And that a number of its staff have shares in the business.

Stinks, doesn’t it? 

More info is needed to jump to any conclusions...

from the Transact website:  £53.5Bn under managaement, 218000 clients, 6600 advisors

It is a FTSE250 company (IntegaFin) with a Market Cap of £763M.  So CHFP could be major players or they could be small shaeholders, being merely 1 of the 6600..  In the latter case a few clients is not going to make asignificant difference

DullGreyGuy

Bear_keeper said:

We have tried to keep this concise & we do hope you can give an unbiased view on our experiences & what if anything we may have missed or done wrong or as we believe the IFA has not been professional & is there an organisation that could say if we have a case against the IFA.

I've not read the Ombudsman's decision but the fact its listed on their website means you have already exhausted the FOS process as only cases that go to 2nd/final stage get published.

Your only option remaining would be to go to court however you should be aware that generally the FOS is considered more favourable to the consumer than the courts are and if you were unable to convince the FOS that there was material issues then your odds arent good with a judge. 

If you truly believe the company is a material shareholder in a £0.8bn company they will have much deeper pockets than you for going through the court process.

Linton

A bit more data, if I have identifued CHFP correctly in the Companies' House website it has assets of less than £500K, so it's approx 1/1000th the size of  Transact. Any suggestion of dubious dealing seems rather far-fetched.

Bear_keeper

Thanks to all who have responded and I look forward to understanding more.

I'm hoping to understand if a lack of integrity and actions that breakdown trust, ie the two most important things IMHO for someone who's advising on your financial future, constitutes poor service or unprofessionalism ie FCA principles 1 & 9.

On the conflict of interest my point was not the fact they had been given shares but that they left the declaration  until after I signed up to Transact and this, with a lot of other things broke our trust in them; after all if you asking someone to advise on your financial future, you need to trust them and trust is earned.

The costs increased and when asked to explain it took over 20 weeks to get a breakdown; where does that leave their integrity?

I'm unsure what is meant by "soft" issues as communications and timing are a integral part of the IFAs professionalism. We didn't complain about the key information or recommendations as the IFA broke our trust before delivering the key information, despite having over 20 weeks, and never implemented their recommendations contra to what the FOS states.

Don't advisers set out what's available to you and give data to back up their advice? and should you not compare what you have with what the potential advice will potentially deliver; that was my expectations.