Adviser: Possible Complaint

gm0

You can keep checking old email and second guessing conduct of business compliance and researching FOS adjudications.  i.e. looking for a compliance failure to use as a stick to beat them with.  Or you can instead focus on the future and get on with that. 

Unless the FA local agent was very poor or distracted - they most likely will not have mucked up contracting and product entry papers.  Email to you of required items whether you read them or not will be used to defend any claim.  And the whole process will drag on for a couple of months with SJP to deadlock. And then for more months with FOS and any downstream haggling.  Before what will, in all likeliehood be a minimal win at best.

But you need to do you based on what you can evidence.  

Facts are most likely that your old adviser exiting at retirement sold you.  Cashed out their ongoing assets under management % ongoing advice fees portfolio to an FA firm.  SJP this time.  But others in that game. 
Happens all the time.  An IFA becomes a FA (compliance has become tedious for small firms).  Or one retires and sells their business to a branded FA.  If still around as FA they wheedle clients around to the suitable "better" new product (as FA).  Or the successor agent of the firm who bought the book - keeps fairly quiet and does the same.  Ignorance is bliss.  Until awkward questions are asked.   Nobody - old or new - has an incentive to scare the horses and prompt you to go looking for independent advice.  Your new FA fox - is a fox. But the reason they are in the hen house is that your prior "IFA" did it to you.  Continuity of service is important to clients they said to themselves....while taking the cheque to the bank.  This is part of my pension - they said.

The SJP contract was quite likely expensively created for rich blend of verbosity to deter reading, legality to deter complaint and obfuscation to slightly misinform and deter the people who tried to read it. 
I think you are chasing your tail.  But if you find something they missed. You may be able to beat them with it to cross subsidise getting away more cheaply. 

The future of EWC / aka exit fees

The main issue presently for existing customers repenting of falling into their hands - is the Early Withdrawal Charge.  The 5 year ramp down on paying ongoing charges on "new money added" if you leave which is presented to you annually in the reports as the two numbers - current value and encashment value.  On that report at least it is hard to fault the visibility and clarity. 

In a couple of years time (unspecified).  It is likely EWC will go for existing customers.  It already has ended for new customers from some time last year.  When it goes (for existing) an initial charge will quite likely be added to all new money added to existing schemes instead (which is not payable on top up contributions presently).

So the pea will be likely moving from the right hand (exit) cup, to the left hand (entry) cup. 
Within a couple of years.  Maybe.  They have not announced it publicly.  Are your feeling grateful yet.  Most are not.

The FCA are trying to influence providers to end exit charging entirely.  Few do it now. SJP being one. 

But they can't practically end "initial charges" on investment setup.
So the "retired" charges will just be spread across initial and ongoing pricing. 
I doubt they will release the existing charges.  Just stop creating new ones and run them off.  I cannot see an incentive for greater generosity.

Make your own assumptions and based on an advisers' offer (IFA), or your own DIY plan. 

You can model the break even.  With the two ongoing charges. The exit fee.  Any transfer incentive.  And of course any new "initial charge" for setup if going advised again.  It won't be instant.  But it really is not difficult to hit a much lower ongoing charge number.

The workaround for the exit charges is fairly obvious - stop adding money.  Open another pension elsewhere and do it there. 

When complaining about the advice interaction is over - compensation agreed or not - you can move the existing funds away.  Or just take the life lesson and do it now

Groover24

@gm0 Thanks for the quite lengthy reply! Many of the points you have made have crossed my mind more than once and are very valid.

• Formal complaint leads to deadlock 
• Stay and wait until EWC is either suitably low or non-existent
• Swallow the cost of the EWC - I think I can be back to current position with a couple of years with lower charges / better performance
• I had thought of starting another pot or wait until I can contribute the amount to my employer's DC scheme and then stop all further contributions
  
• I have wondered if existing customers could benefit from an FCA ruling to end all exit charges. Nothing in the pipeline as far as I am aware

I no longer trust the SJP FA so it could be nothing to lose by complaining. There are some possible things I may catch them on, but as you have said they will probably have it sewn up and I end up chasing my tail. The emails are recent and only to confirm information

Groover24

Well, after a bit of a tussle with my own mind I have submitted a complaint to SJP. I am not sure how far it will get me but I feel that it is necessary. I am not sure why I had doubts about making a complaint as I do not 100% trust the SJP FA.

I have found that HMRC relaxed rules on changes to our DC company scheme so I can make changes whenever I feel rather than once a year or due to particular life events. So I think money will be going there for a while

I now have a sense of relief :-)

dunstonh

Please keep us updated with the outcome.

Ibrahim5

Another tale of an IFA retiring and throwing their customers under the bus. Disgusting. Just shows the priority of IFAs. It's what's best for them first, and the needs of the customers always are second.

Groover24

dunstonh said:

SJP are not IFAs.   And I suspect that on a complaint, not showing the charges breakdowns correctly would result in an upheld decision.

@dunstonh I had not picked  up on this previously and maybe should have added this into my complaint ... the only information given about charges is that they would be higher. There is no comparison of what I was paying and would be paying. A lot of the pre-sale information was on sheets of A3.

Will have to wait an see what the outcome is!

Groover24

@dunstonh and @gm0 in particular but to all that contributed to my initial query I have had a reply from SJP ..

They have agreed to let me transfer the whole of my pot without an exit charge and will pay a small amount in compensation for the trouble and a refund on advisor fees. I have been offered what I asked for so it would seem that I will be parting ways very soon.

The overall reply was about 50/50 agree and disagree with my complaint but they came down in my favour. I had previously stopped OAC payments and diverted money to my company scheme until this was resolved.

Now to condsider and IFA or self-invest!