Plea for help re Pension Scam/Missale

Appeal the FSCS decision. However, they are only allowed to review the complaint against the adviser. If the FSCS dont think the adviser is fault, then the appeal is unlikely to change that.

At the same time, raise a complaint to Metlife and include a copy of what the FSCS have said about the failures on the Metlife side.

Once metlife give their response, if you don't like it, you can then refer it to the FOS.

AngelCakes wrote: »

I contacted the adviser who was perplexed, and Metlife.
Metlife told me that although there literature stated “guaranteed income” , it didnt mean it was guaranteed...it was just the name of the fund.

Your perplexed advisor should at least be able to explain what the "guarantees" relate to and how they work.

Looking at the Metlife website ceratin products do carry guarantees of some kind.

Metlife had a range of non standard products with varying levels of capital security. Many of these used the term "guaranteed" prior to the credit crunch when the word "guaranteed" was more loosely used than it is post credit crunch.

I say non-standard in respect of what was offered in the mainstream vs what they offered. A few American companies came over to the UK and tried to offer a range of third-way products which allowed the use of consumer-friendly terms like "guaranteed" but they had a number of flaws and were not actually guaranteed. This has actually resulted in a number of advice firms that sold these plans suffering upheld complaints.

For example, on the investment product that had a lock-in once the unit price increased and could not go lower than x% than that locked in value. That sounds like a guarnatee of x%. However, to meet product and adviser charges, they sold units in the plan. This meant the unit count was going down. And the capital "guarantee" was actually a unit price guarantee. So, with a declining unit count, the capital could never fully guaranteed. There was also a cost of the guarantees as the underlying investments used the blackrock index trackers.

The generic documentation for metlife combined the different versions. The personalised documentation would have specific terms chosen.

The secured income version was not the same as the protected growth version. The secure income version would guarantee to pay an income for life, even if the investment value ran out. However, the value would go down as well as up and had no protection applied to it. The secure growth version had lock-ins on capital value but did not provide a secure income. There was the ability to take the income option early and not take the income but defer it to boost the figure when it was eventually taken.

7 months later, i have received a resolution letter , which basically read that the adviser was not culpable because they used Metlifes documentation as their basis, and it was Metlifes documents that used the word guaranteed income.

I wonder if this confusion comes from the FSCS using the generic documentation that covers all the options rather than the specific illustrations/report that would have used the personalised illustrations.