Tag: Pension Scams

NOVIA GLOBAL VS OLD MUTUAL INTERNATIONAL

The problem with money is that it blows away if you don’t hold it down, tie it up or stuff it down your knickers. That’s why you need to put it somewhere safe: in a shoe box on top of the wardrobe; under your mattress; in the safe or – if you’re feeling really brave – in the bank. Trouble is, left in cash, money shrinks (inflation, charges, moths). This is why so many advisers recommend a platform – aka “somewhere safe” to keep your money.

So, let’s look at two possible alternatives: the Novia Global platform and the Old Mutual International “bond”.

I’ve met Bill Vasilieff who runs Novia Global. He serves Earl Grey and nice biscuits. A man of few words, and even fewer syllables, he gave me a quick rundown on how the Novia Global platform works – and how much it costs.

I haven’t met Peter Kenny of Old Mutual International (OMI) – although I have spoken to him several times. As broadly Irish as Bill is Scottish, Peter Kenny also comes across as a softly-spoken and sincere chap. But there the similarity seems to end. Peter stood me up – I got a view of his office waiting room but wasn’t offered a cup of tea (let alone a biscuit).

Mind you, there isn’t much I don’t know about the Old Mutual International bonds. I’ve seen thousands of their policyholders’ statements – and they are frighteningly ugly and depressing. They accurately, faithfully and unemotionally report the destruction of their victims’ atrocious losses. And OMI regularly (like clockwork!) take their quarterly fees – irrespective of how deep the destruction of the policyholders’ funds is. In fact, some victims even find themselves in negative figures as OMI continue to account for their fees long after the whole blooming lot has gone.

Anyway, back to Bill and his welcoming teapot….I can’t really compare him to Pete but I can compare the two products. So here is a brief and brutal side-by-side line up of what the two “platforms” offer. And how much they cost. And how difficult they are to get out of. And how much financial crime they are associated with.

So the OMI “life bond” costs almost six times as much as the Novia Global platform. But that is if you are locked in for five years. You can get it cheaper – 1.15% – if you get locked in for ten years. But you must remember that if you are scammed, then OMI will have paid the scammer an 8% commission and you could get stuck with paying the quarterly fees for the next ten years, even if you’ve figured out you’ve been scammed. And the quarterly fees are based on your original investment – not on the impaired amount. If you’ve been scammed, and your fund value drops inexorably, the 1.15% will become bigger and bigger. And even if you lose your whole fund, OMI will keep taking their charges and pushing you further and further into debt.

A bit like the lyrics to Hotel California, with an OMI “bond”, you can’t check out any time you want, and you can only leave after between five and ten years. OMI will take that number of years to claw back the commission paid to your adviser – even if you have long since learned that your adviser was an unregulated scammer and has conned you into unsuitable, high-risk, high-commission investments that have badly damaged your fund. You are stuck with paying the quarterly fees to OMI – even after your whole fund has gone. One victim went from plus £300k to minus £25k – and counting. As your funds inside the OMI bond shrink, the 1.15% grows and helps destroy what is left of your fund even faster. But with the Novia Global platform, you can leave any time you want. No exit penalties. No hard feelings.

In Spain, the Supreme Court has ruled that bogus life assurance policies – such as those provided by Old Mutual International – used to hold investments are illegal. This is because they are neither proper insurance policies (which take risk in the interests of the consumer) nor are they proper investment platforms. The Spanish aren’t stupid – they can spot a scam much more easily than other jurisdictions and take action to prevent them from ruining future victims. This is in stark contrast to the likes of the Isle of Man and Gibraltar – which seem to revel in encouraging scams and protecting firms such as Old Mutual International (and STM Group) which facilitate financial crime on a massive scale.

January 30, 2019
POOF! – there goes your whole life savings

Scammers who act as financial advisers and operate pension scams, don’t wear a badge to identify themselves – nor do they pay any redress for the devastation they cause. Oh no, of course they don’t! The scammers dress in snazzy suits, drive go-faster cars, sport posh briefcases and speak with a silky sales tune floating out of their mouths. All this lulls victims into a false sense of security. Promises of guaranteed high returns and capital protection, as well as tax efficiency – and then… POOF! – there goes your whole life savings.

This poem was passed over to us by a twitter friend. We think it wonderfully sums up the way scammers work:

Poem

Above the calming waves, you spot a dorsal fin,

Is it that greedy shark who’s gonna take you in?

So you dip your toes to test and out pops friendly Flipper,

He’s so adorable but…

did you know his snout can also be a killer?

You listen to his clicking sounds that dull out your senses,

You write those cheques then wish you hadn’t been so careless,

As you wave goodbye to Flipper, you feel like all those lemmings,

The wistful trail of your pension and POOF!

there goes your whole life savings.

Don’t fall for the silky-voiced salesman´s tune. Follow the guidance in our ten standards to safeguard your pension from the scammers.

Ten standards for a financial adviser

1 – The firm that a trustworthy financial adviser works for will have the correct licences to advise you on your pension. It will be fully licensed (regulated) for both insurance and investment, and the adviser will not hesitate to give you proof of this.

2 – A trustworthy financial adviser will be fully qualified to the correct level and be happy to show you their certificates. A certified adviser will work to a correct code (not a scammer’s code) and never use silky sales techniques to get you to sign over your life savings.

3 – A trustworthy firm and their fully qualified advisers will have all the correct paperwork and this includes professional indemnity insurance.

4 – A financial adviser who wants to help your pension grow steadily – with safe and suitable investments – will never throw sky-high promises of super fat returns at you. Scammers love this too-good-to-be-true sales technique. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is! And it is a sign that they are working for commission benefits that will line their pockets and probably not suit your risk profile. A pension risk profile is usually a low-medium risk which will grow steadily. High commission investments are often high risk and also often fail – causing devastating losses.

5 – A financial adviser that works for your benefit and that alone will never expose you to a hard sales pitch. Repeat phone calls and pressure to sign – “for fear of missing out” – are often a tell-tale sign they are working for commission. Scam advisers – working for fat commissions at the expense of customer satisfaction – will rarely respect your risk profile. They will rarely observe any compliance ethics either.

6 – A financial adviser that you can trust should NEVER up-sell you with ‘extra’ investments like insurance bonds. Often these are a double wrapper that will make a scammer extra commissions. These ‘extra’ investments will often simply drain your pension pot, not contribute to it.

7 – If your adviser tries to sell you structured notes, UCIS funds, unsecured loan notes, in-house funds, non-standard assets or any ongoing commission-paying investments, he is probably not a trustworthy adviser. Scammers love to use such inappropriate investments, which line their pockets but deplete your pension fund.

8 – An adviser you can trust will be happy to disclose ALL fees, charges and commissions, in writing: no ifs or buts. If the adviser you are using skims round this VERY IMPORTANT information, he probably isn’t a trustworthy adviser. Hidden charges are often how scammers line their pockets and destroy your pension fund.

9 – A trustworthy firm and adviser will ensure you have full access to accounts of how you are updated on your pension fund and portfolio performance. This should be outlined to you at the time of transfer, usually a quarterly statement AND a yearly review. If your financial adviser cannot offer this information readily – just walk away.

10 – A firm you can trust will have all their company history readily available. This should include public evidence of complaints made, rejected or upheld and redress paid.

A firm with advisers who are unwilling to answer all of the questions you ask them is clearly a firm to be avoided.

If the firm you choose and the adviser they assign to you cannot attain all ten of the standards listed – find one that can.

Don’t risk your life savings to the tune of a silky-voiced salesman. He may look the part, but appearances can so easily fool.

Scam victims will tell you they wish they had ensured their pension transfer had adhered to all ten of these standards.

Cartoon blog – Don’t be the next pension scam victim

January 30, 2019
Pension scammers must be stopped

In the Pension Life office, we have been wondering how to get the information about pension scams more widely seen, heard and taken on board. We’d like to ensure the masses are educated and aware that pension scammers can strike from many angles, and with a variety of “deals”. Pension scammers must be stopped and together we can work towards this.

A quick Google search of the phrase “Pension Scam” shows no end of advice available, so why is this information not being spread to the public more widely and effectively?

Why was 2017 the WORST year for pension scams?

Google’s current top-ranking search return for the phrase “pension scam” is How to avoid a pension scam by Pension Wise. This site offers simple and basic information on how to spot a scam and how to report it.

This is followed by The Pensions Regulator (tPR) which, offers 5-step advice to protect a pension from pension scammers.

In third place, the Money Advice Service offers information on “How to spot a pension scam”. Money Advice highlight that scammers can be very good at disguising themselves as bona fide, regulated companies.

The FCA’s website comes in fourth, with their information on smart scams, advising people to be aware that the offer of a free pension review is often cause for concern and suspicion.

But, even with all this information out there, 2017 was still the worst year ever for pension scams. It seems that despite changes to regulations, scammers seem to come out on top nine times out of ten. Serial scammers are able to move onward and upward, scam after scam after scam. Officials, like the regulators, ombudsmen, arbiters and HMRC just stand idly by letting it happen again and again and again.

Maybe the problem is that the scammers are ever evolving in their behavior and tactics – and the authorities just can’t keep up. Pension Life came about because of the Ark pension liberation scam. But scamming tactics have moved on considerably.

We now we have noticeably less liberation and more investment scams where the introducer heads for the investment with the highest commissions, with no regard for the risk or fees that are applied to the fund.

Furthermore, if someone does approach you via a cold call claiming to be a viable company with a convincing sales pitch – how do you know if what they are saying is genuine? How do you know if they are a qualified financial adviser? Unfortunately, in the business of pensions and finance, the sad truth is that you need to: trust slowly; question quickly.

In the CWM case, victims saw unqualified, unregulated advisers placing low to medium risk investors’ entire funds into high-risk, fixed-term structured notes.

Fractional scamming is also on the up. Unqualified, unregulated firms posing as financial advisers act as “introducers” – and often introduce thousands of victims to outright scams. The funds then go through various other parties’ hands to ensure everyone gets their piece of the pie. Each party involved along the chain, creams their bit off the top of the pension fund, until the fund is a fraction of its former self. This means it will take years to get the pension back to its original state, let alone to start showing a profit.

Perhaps one of the most iniquitous aspects of pension and investment scams is the routine use of insurance bonds. (a significant part of the fractional scam and an unnecessary second “wrapper”). The life offices themselves are a big part of the pension scam industry.

Firms such as OMI, SEB, RL360 and Generali accept business repeatedly from unlicensed firms and known scammers. These so-called “life offices” (although they really ought to be called “death offices”) sit back and watch while these scammers gamble away the victims’ life savings on toxic structured notes and high-risk investments. Despite reporting on the inexorable destruction of the funds, firms like Generali et al just keep on taking their fees every quarter – and will sometimes do so until there is nothing left in the fund.

The best advice we can give, is to ensure you know exactly who you are dealing with and where your money will be going – every penny of it.

There is no such thing as “free”, and there will ALWAYS be commissions and fees on any pension transfer, legitimate or not. But however much it is – as in REALLY IS – the client needs to know and accept these costs. Many advisory firms conceal the real costs and the clients only find out what they are when it is too late, and the damage has been done.

Make sure you have everything in writing AND read it all – at least three times, if not more!

Make sure you understand everything: the costs, fixed terms, the risk level of investments – and if you don´t, then ask more questions.

Keep a regular eye on your fund; don´t trust any company 100%; make sure you know exactly what your fund is doing and do not ever be fobbed off with the explanation that any losses are “just paper losses”.

If in doubt – JUST SAY NO!!

I am writing a series of blogs about pensions, pension scammers and how to safeguard your pension fund from fraudsters. Please make sure you read as many as possible and ensure you know everything you should about your pension transfer. You only get one shot at getting it right – if you get it wrong, the damage may never be undone.

If we can ensure the masses are educated about pension scammers and financial fraud, we can help stop the scammers in their tracks – globally.

January 30, 2019
Hidden dangers of charges that ruin your pension investments

In many pension scam cases, we find victims telling us that they were not informed about the hidden charges that were applied to their fund. This is why it is essential to warn the public about the hidden dangers of charges that ruin your pension investments. These charges often take a huge chunk out of the fund before and during its new investments. Scammers lie about these charges, and victims never find out about them until it is too late.

The investments the scammers use are often high-risk and totally unsuitable for a pension fund. Pensions should be invested in diverse, low-to-medium risk assets which are prudent and liquid. And pensions don’t need an insurance wrapper at all, especially since the wrapper pays a whopping 8% commission to the scammers. And, sadly, much of the offshore advisory industry relies entirely on commissions – so the unethical advisers always chose the investments that pay the highest commissions. Unfortunately for the victims, the sweet-talking “advisers” are very good at concealing these hidden charges (commissions). They lure victims away from the small print and flash the promise of high – often “guaranteed” – returns.

Scammers – entirely reliant on commissions – are very good at blinding their victims from the risks they are inadvertently taking by putting their hard-earned cash into investments that pay the highest commissions. These scammers are pure salesmen, rather than proper financial advisers. Many of them are not QUALIFIED to give financial advice and they are only out for their “cut” of their victims’ hard-earned life savings. The hidden charges (commissions), paid unknowingly by the victims, buy the scammers their lavish lifestyle. Once the victims have signed on the dotted line, the scammers have no interest in what happens to the remainder of the funds after the commissions have been taken out.

So how does this illicit commission work? And how do the hidden charges damage a victim’s fund?

Let us assume a victim has a fund of £100,000. And he is transferring from a UK pension to an offshore QROPS.

First, a transfer specialist will charge a fee for the transfer advice. Then the offshore adviser will charge a setup fee. Then the QROPS provider will charge a setup fee. So, now we don’t have £100,000 any more – we probably only have £95,000 if we are lucky.

Then the scammer will put the victim into an insurance bond – such as OMI or RL360. The scammer will earn 8% on this (i.e. £8,000). But the victim won’t see this, because the insurance bond provider (OMI, RL360 etc) will claw this back over a ten-year period.

The scammers at OMI or RL360 will always keep a fat chunk of the fund in cash to pay their own fees – usually via hidden charges.

But let’s say they allow £80,000 of the remaining £95,000 to be invested, and let’s say the scammer at the advisory firm invests £40,000 in structured notes and £40,000 in “dirty” funds (i.e. the funds that pay the biggest commissions). This could be a further 10% in commission – so the victim will think he is getting £80,000 worth of investment, but in reality he is only getting £72,000 worth of investment. He simply can’t see the £8,000 in commissions because they are carefully hidden.

Eventually, the victim will realise that his fund is only shrinking, and that it will never have a chance to grow. Growth will be mathematically impossible, because of the constant, hidden fees/commissions. Some victims realise how they have been shafted quite quickly and are able to take positive action to move away from the rogue adviser. But for many, it is too late and too much damage has been done. Their funds will never have a chance to recover to anywhere near where they started. They would have been much better off sticking their retirement savings under the mattress. Because, of course, the “advisers” don’t care – they are long gone in their fancy sports cars and designer suits, sipping champagne at the local exclusive golf club.

In the UK we have regulations in place that prevent financial advisers from taking commissions. This works fine for the ethical, regulated sector of the financial advisory profession. But the unregulated offshore spivs who masquerade as “advisers” – and are, in reality, nothing more than silver-tonged salesmen – still do untold damage to the reputation of the industry by promoting unsuitable, high-risk, illiquid investments to low-risk pension savers (including those resident in the UK).

Many of the scammers are keen to get their UK-based victims’ pensions offshore to escape the protection of the British regulations. This, of course, prevents victims from having access to the FSCS and the ombudsmen.

A prime example of this is the dastardly duo: Phillip Nunn and Patrick McCreesh. This pair of scammers received £ millions promoting the Capita Oak, Thurlstone Loans, Henley Retirement Benefits Scheme and Berkeley Burke SIPPS scams – leaving 1,200 victims worried sick about facing poverty in retirement.

The Nunn/McCreesh double act has gone on to promote their own toxic investment fund: the Blackmore Global Fund. This is a UCIS fund (Unregulated Collective Investment Scheme), which is illegal to promote to UK residents. Yet Phillip Nunn and Patrick McCreesh sold these investments with the help of David Vilka of Square Mile Financial Services. (David Vilka is NOT a qualified financial adviser and Square Mile is not regulated to provide investment advice). Nobody knows where the Blackmore Global victims’ funds have gone – as Nunn and McCreesh will not have the fund audited (the last thing they want is anyone knowing what they have invested their victims’ life savings in). But one thing we can guarantee is that the scammers Nunn, McCreesh and Vilka made a pocket full of cash through hidden charges.

In all leading expat jurisdictions – most notably Spain and Dubai – the scammers are beavering away grinding the commission machines. They take their hidden charges with no remorse.

In the time it took the gentle reader to read this blog, at least one victim will have lost their life savings. And one scammer will have earned 8% commission out of selling a useless, pointless, expensive insurance bond – such as OMI, Generali or RL360 – and up to 10% (or even more) on the underlying investments. On top of this, the scammer – masquerading as an “adviser” – will also charge a 1% “advisory” fee. And probably a setup fee. And then there are the QROPS charges.

Henry Tapper wrote an excellent blog on this very subject – he called it FRACTIONAL SCAMMING. I do hope that all offshore advisory firms will read this carefully. The excuse that they didn’t really understand the impact of hidden charges and commissions – and were only copying what they thought the industry was already doing successfully – is simply not going to wash any more. The damage caused by this toxic practice has been widely published and exposed.

The only way forward is to go fee-based. And to outlaw commissions and hidden charges altogether. The scammers won’t do it – but decent, ethical firms will. The hard part will be to warn expats against vultures. Ethical firms will help with this initiative. Obviously, the scammers won’t.

January 21, 2019
Expats and Brexit – Safeguard your pension

BREXIT is the question on everybody’s lips at the moment. BREXIT: will we? won´t we? deal? no deal? So many unanswered questions and so much scaremongering. We would like to offer some helpful words and hopefully protect you from making rash decisions. This could help you to safeguard your pension. Many scammers are trying to cash in on Brexit – make sure sure you’re not their next victim.

Remember I am not a financial adviser. I am a blogger, and I write about financial crime. I provide information about past scams and on how to avoid falling victim to new scams – especially pension scams. The words I write are aimed to help you safeguard your pension from the many offshore scammers.

So, Expats, what does Brexit mean for your pension rights? The short answer is that we really do not know! There are currently lots of “coulds” and “mights” being thrown around, but no certainties. And herein lies the risk that you and your pension could fall victim to a scam with all this scaremongering.

We are seeing a lot of adverts for expats to transfer into a QROPS before the dreaded 11pm on March 29, 2019. One company I have noticed that seems to be using Brexit to attract customers is Spectrum IFA. Back on 1st July 2018, we wrote a qualified and registered blog about Spectrum IFA. They didn´t do too well.

Firstly, despite Spectrum IFA advertising themselves as “international financial advisers”, with some digging we were able to find out that they DO NOT in fact have an investment licence. This means they are not legally allowed to advise on pensions or investments. Secondly, they scored rather poorly on the qualified and registered percentage too. Out of the 16 advisers we checked up on, only four were registered with the appropriate institutes. The rest came up red – meaning the institute had no record of them.

Worrying isn´t it? Offshore companies can try to claim they are international financial advisers, but actually be unregulated and unqualified to carry out the very service they offer! The “advisory” firms have flash websites, and some have several offices around Europe and beyond. Their PR is great at scaremongering expats about their pension investments in the lead up to Brexit.

In Spectrum’s ´Deal or no deal´ article number 14, they suggest you marry a Spaniard in order to prepare for Brexit. I´m not sure about you, but I feel that getting hitched to a native to be able to stay in Spain is a pretty drastic measure and definitely more than a little illegal.

Spectrum IFA is just one example of a firm that probably ought to be given a wide berth when transferring your precious pension fund offshore. Safeguard your pension by avoiding unregulated and unqualified firms like this one.

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It may seem daunting when you read that your UK pension could be subjected to extra taxes if we leave the EU on a no-deal basis. You may be thinking that you should transfer into a QROPS quickly, to save on these taxes. But what you really need to know is that a QROPS is not without punitive costs of its own. They can be expensive and unless you have a good lump sum to transfer you could see a huge chunk of your pension pot taken in transfer and set-up fees anyway! Potentially making you worse off.

Unfortunately, until we make a deal or actually go through with Brexit, nothing is very clear for expats. Which leaves us in an uncertain time and situation. This, I understand, may be daunting for many people, but I urge you to take a deep breath before considering any speedy offshore pension transfers. Thousands of people – especially those who have already fallen victim to scammers such as Continental Wealth Management – would give you exactly the same urgent advice.

If you do want to transfer your pension, please heed this advice to safeguard your pension:

Make sure you choose a reputable firm – one that is regulated, insured and employs fully qualified (and registered) advisers.

We did a series of blogs last year on offshore companies and their advisers. The results were extremely worrying. Aside from their blatant disregard for the necessity of these qualifications – due to being offshore – the number of unqualified advisers offshore was cause for serious concern. Many of the firms had not one single qualified and registered adviser on their team.

Qualified & registered? We do not need to be – we are offshore!

Know all the correct questions to ask an adviser before you sign on the dotted line.

A reputable firm will have a fact-find procedure, and adhere to a client’s risk profile.

A reputable firm will have compliance procedure.

A reputable firm will have clear and consistent explanations and justifications for the use of insurance bonds.

Where will your funds be invested, and how will you know if this is in line with your risk profile?

A pension fund should be placed into a low-medium risk investment.

Scammers tend to go for high-risk, professional-investor-only investments as they offer them the best commissions. But a pension fund should have more protection than this. Avoid investments that involve structured notes (like CWM´s Blue Chip notes), UCIS funds (like Blackmore Global), in-house funds, non-standard assets and any ongoing commission-paying investments.

Insurance bonds – often used by scammers – are usually an unnecessary double wrapper on your fund, that costs you more in fees and charges than a straightforward platform, lining the pockets of the scammers – but making your fund smaller.

How much will the fees and charges be? Remember NO pension transfer is free.

Legitimate firms will normally have a small transfer charge and a small annual fee.

Scammers will often be vague about fees and charges, and avoid giving you a straight answer so they can cover up the true figures. These hidden figures can see your pension fund decrease by 25% or even more in some cases.

A reputable firm should offer you regular updates on the progress of your fund.

You should receive an annual review and a quarterly update showing the fees, charges and growth of your fund.

If your new firm and adviser fail to do this, alarm bells should ring loudly.

Finally, a reputable company will publish evidence to show records of complaints made, rejected or upheld and redress paid.

If the adviser cannot show you all this information, do not trust them.

If it all sounds to good to be true, it probably is – RUN!

Safeguard your pension from the scammers

January 7, 2019
Scammer jailed – hip hip hooray! – scammer jailed

SCAMMER JAILED! Hip hip hooray! we say. What a great start to the new year. Neil Bartlett, 53, of Delamere Road, Ainsdale, used £4.5m of his victims’ money to fund an extravagant lifestyle of foreign travel, top hotels and gambling.

Bartlett was handed an eight year sentence for his involvement in the multi-million pound investment fraud dating back from 2013. He scammed 27 victims out of a collective sum of £4.5 million, some of which had been his childhood friends. He didn´t stop there, he also took power of attorney for a vulnerable elderly victim and defrauded her as well!

As is the case with many scams, the victims are unlikely to recoup any of the funds they entrusted to him. Bartlett is said to have spent the hard-earned funds on prostitutes, escorts and expensive holidays. The victims, all of whom knew him on a personal level, are disgusted at his behaviour and were glad to see this scammer jailed.

Here in the Pension Life office, we are always pleased to hear that a scammer has been jailed. The only shame, is that we just don´t hear the words enough. It would be great if we could write blogs that contain the words SCAMMER JAILED on a daily basis. But sadly it is just not the case.

The SFO have a long list of scammers that are ´under investigation´, however, we rarely hear that they have been jailed. Whilst we read stories of people who house the homeless being jailed!

An example of this is Peter and Sara Moat of Fast Pensions – which was wound up back in May 2018. We know they fraudulently took £21m from their victims. We know they did not invest it in the interest of their victims. We know they invested the funds into other businesses they own. We know that they reside in Denia, where their daughter goes to a private school. We know all this – AND the SFO knows all this – yet the Moats are still free to live a lavish lifestyle whilst their victims go without a pension and some face losing their homes as well as bankruptcy.

I´m sure the victims of the Fast Pensions and Blu loans scams would find some solace in reading the words – “scammer jailed” in relation to both Peter Moat and Sara Moat. But I´m not sure if they ever will – and that makes us sad and bloody angry.

What is even sadder is that the big boys, the serial scammers like Stephen Ward, XXXX XXXX, Phillip Nunn and Patrick McCreesh are still allowed to roam free despite their numerous scams being under investigation by the SFO for some years now. It would make our year if we could write “Stephen Ward – SERIAL SCAMMER JAILED”. However, at least we can confirm that Ward was banned from being a pension trustee at the end of 2018. So I guess the SFO is doing something – however small.

Thousands of victims and hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of pension money has been fraudulently taken from the victims of scam schemes sold by the above-named scammers. Schemes like Capita Oak, Blackmore Global Fund and the Trafalgar Multi Asset Fund.

In fact, the CEO of STM Gibraltar (the facilitators of the Trafalgar QROPS scam), Alan Kentish was recently released without charge after his arrest, and was fully backed by the STM board. Despite clear evidence of the part he played in the now suspended – £20 million – Trafalgar QROPS pension scam, which he facilitated with XXXX XXXX.

AND to rub salt into the wounds of the Trafalgar victims, STM group went on to announce record profits in 2017 and to announce they will be offering SIPPS products as well.

Scammer jailed ? ? ? – not here I´m afraid!

All we can do is make a very loud suggestion that STM Group Gibraltar – STM Fidecs – Alan Kentish – should all be given a VERY wide berth when considering a change of pension trustee – as from past evidence they are not to be trusted!

January 4, 2019
Fines to be imposed on cold callers, but will it really put a stop the scammers?

In follow up to our blog ´Cold calling ban not approved´, we can confirm that as of the 9th January 2019, that companies who cold call with advice on pensions schemes could face fines of up to £500,000. Notice I highlight the word ´could´.

If you have read our other blog you will already know that we have been waiting several years for a cold calling ban to be put in place. It is more than irritating to see that instead of a blanket ban on all cold calling they have imposed a fine on certain cold calls.

This also begs the question of how they had time to pass the legislation for the fine, but not the legislation to simply just ban all cold calling – FULL STOP – no ifs no buts. I also wonder how they are going to track down the cold callers and enforce the fines onto them. Will it be the people making the cold calls that get the fines? or will it be the companies setting up the call centres, or god forbid will it be the masterminds and serial scammers who continue to set up toxic, high-risk funds to lure in their victims?

The victims of the Continental Wealth management scam were cold called, see their story here.

CWM CONference

An article written by the Telegraph confirms my fears about the lack of ability the regulators have in enforcing the fines they have already issued. The ICO has been fining companies for nuisance calls since 2015, it is estimated that nearly half of all land line calls are cold calls made to the elderly!

The Telegraph writes:

´The ICO has issued more than £5.7m in fines to cold call companies for breaching nuisance rules since 2015, but of the 27 fines issued only nine have been paid in full, recently published government figures revealed.´

The sad truth from these figures clearly shows that despite fines being made they are not being imposed, the companies are simply not paying them. If companies are happy to ignore the fines then they are probably happy to ignore the threat of a fine and continue to make cold calls. Figures from Ofgem have shown that consumers were bombarded with 3.9 billion nuisance phone calls and texts last year but only 27 fines were issued and just nine of those actually paid in full!

There are also so many loopholes these companies – who operate the call centers – can leap through. People must opt out of being cold called, if they have not done this, then companies can claim they were happy to receive the calls.

For instance, if you are online – say on a compare website – and you do not tick the box to state you do not want to be contacted by third parties, you are giving your permission to be contacted. This then means that your data is sold on and the company that calls you about the pension scheme transfer can claim that you were happy to be contacted. It wasn´t a cold call as they had opted in.

The loophole enables them to potentially escape any fine, as technically the receiver of the call had agreed to being contacted via a third party. The company making the calls can claim that they were not making a “cold call”. It feels like this legislation has been made after the horse has bolted from the stable. Hundreds of people have been scammed through the use of cold calling and hundreds more will continue to be scammed with the use of cold calling techniques, through loopholes.

Furthermore, we still have the issue of the offshore firms, the firms that – due to being offshore – don´t feel that they have to abide by any rules that apply to the UK pension and investment market. These unregulated firms often employ unqualified advisers and will surely not be phased by the new litigation. They will continue to cold call and mis-sell these inappropriate toxic funds, that invariably pay the scammers high commissions and leave the victims pension fund in tatters.

Pension scams involving cold calls such as Capita Oak, Continental Wealth Management, Trafalgar Multi Asset Fund have left hundreds of victims with out a decimated pension fund. These unregulated, shameless firms and their snake salesmen are not going to acknowledge the treat of a fine, nor the administer of a fine. AND if they are fined do the government really think they will pay it?

Serial scammers like Stephen Ward who started out on the ARK pension scam, went on to scam again AND again, despite the scams being shut down by HMRC and the tPR again and again! None of the scammers who promoted these scam have been put behind bars and no money has been paid back to the victims. The scammers show no remorse for their actions. These blatant financial criminals aren´t going to pay a fine for cold calling if they aren´t going to admit the pension scheme´s they set up were fraudulent.

A quick google search of cold call gives untold amounts of advice on how to do it efficiently in 2019! Whilst some of these companies aren´t UK based, the evidence is clear. Cold calling pays and the companies that benefit from cold calling are not going to suddenly stop making them.

The regulators are really going to have to step up and do some serious regulating and enforcing if these fines are to be issued, actually followed up and collected.

The sad truth is that whilst the fines sound great on paper, they will do little to protect the public from being scammed.

So again we would like to say – loud and clear

If you are cold called – just hang up!

Safeguard your pension from the scammers!

January 2, 2019
Cold calling ban still not approved

FT adviser published an article entitled, Cold calling ban approved by committee. However, do not get too excited as it hasn’t actually been approved by Parliament or got anywhere closer to being included in UK legislation.

Plans to ban cold calling were announced back in August 2017. Scammers love to cold call their victims and hard sell them their schemes. But it seems the number of people being targeted by scammers has risen immensely despite campaigns by the FCA and tPR.

In our opinion, there should be a blanket ban on cold calling and it should have happened many years ago. There really is no debate necessary. Scammers use cold calling techniques to lure their victims in. If they were not allowed to do this, there would be a significant reduction in scams.

Just this week, I have had two scam emails sent to me. One supposedly from HSBC (with whom I don’t bank!) and one supposedly from HMRC. The bank email told me I needed to log into my internet banking via their link and add my card details. The HMRC one promised me a tax rebate if I followed their link and input my credit card details!

To my relatively informed eye, it was obvious these were scam emails, but the offer of money back from HMRC did have a certain compelling lure to it. Several hundred pounds just before Christmas, yes please! However, I haven’t completed my tax return yet and very much doubt HMRC owe me anything. With tempting offers like this, it is easy to see how people can be lulled into a false sense of security, especially by a smooth talking salesman.

In so many scams, we hear the same thing; “I was called by a lovely man and he told me he could make my pension value increase if I transferred into…..but now my pension pot is worth less – much less.” The sad truth is that invariably the salesman is based offshore, is completely unqualified and only interested in the high commissions he will get from selling you a thoroughly inappropriate investment. He will probably sell you a useless life bond too. Both of which will take a huge chunk of your pot before it has actually been invested anywhere.

The government has apologised for missing their deadline on passing this law, but I guess with all this Brexit chaos they are somewhat distracted. Given that they are unable to make a decision or deal on Brixit, I would guess they might struggle with passing a law that would protect their hardworking, tax-paying citizens.

I would also like to suggest that passing the ban might not be quite in the British government’s best interest. Often victims who have been scammed, have also liberated a cash amount out of their pension and this is taxable. 55% taxable to be precise. Therefore, by allowing the scams to go on, HMRC can coin in more tax revenues.

So, as we cannot count on our government to protect us from the cold calling scams, Pension Life is here to help.

Cold called? HANG UP!!!!

You don’t have to say anything, but if you do, make sure it’s something along the lines of:

“Buzz off.”

Trolley’s Pension Scam Guide

In a perfect world, we would also like to see an international ban on the following:

Unregulated advisory firms

Unqualified advisers

Commission on financial products

Life bonds – such as Old Mutual International, SEB, Generali and RL360

Structured notes

Investment funds with entry and exit fees

UK residents being put into QROPS

Retail investors being put into UCIS funds

AND, WE’D LIKE TO SEE LIFE OFFICES AND ADVISORY FIRMS COMPENSATING VICTIMS OF MIS-SELLING, NEGLIGENCE, AND FRAUD.

December 31, 2018
Where’s my pension?

Henry Tapper has published an interesting article about the problem of the number of lost pensions. We live in an age where careers are much more fluid and many people move companies or retrain and change professions. This mean many people may have had five or six different jobs (if not more) throughout their working career. Keeping track and actually remembering who all their employers were is difficult, let alone remembering who the ceding provider of their pension was 30 years ago. Where’s my pension? is now a frequently asked question.

Henry writes:

‘According to the Pension Policy Institute , there is £20,000,000,000 of other people’s money swilling about in pension trusts, in the troughs of life insurance companies or “managed” in “self-invested” personal pensions.’

That is a huge amount of money that has been worked hard for and is to get someone through their later years. So how can we answer the question: Where’s my pension?

Well apparently, according to Henry’s intelligence, the DWP were going to do something about this situation back in March. However, – and really not that surprisingly – it’s now December and nothing has been done!

The DWP had proposed a pensions ‘dashboard’, a go-to for people who were stuck with the unanswered question of ‘Where’s my pension?’ But we are still waiting for this to be completed and explained.

Currently, you can use professional pension finding services like Origo or Experian to find your missing pension(s), although this is lengthy and not free of charge. Henry and the Sun newspaper have kindly put together this DIY dashboard pension finding advice.

So, in answer to the question: ‘Where is my pension?’ it is probably wise to DIY your pension dashboard. If you wait for the DWP you may be cold in the ground before their proposals are actually met! Meaning they get your money! No surprise, then, that they are being slow with their proposals.

We also need to remember that scammers are lurking in the undergrowth, so will this be the next scam tactic?

Stuck on the question, “Where’s my pension??” Never fear. We can help. Free pensions finding service and review.’

When it comes to finance, nothing in life comes for free. These free pension reviews are often followed by high commissions and even toxic, high-risk investments. Leaving you worse off than you were when you were stuck with the ‘Where’s my pension?’ question.

If you want help with your pension, make sure you use a fully qualified and reputable firm. Ensure you know ALL of the fees and costs that will be applied to your pension transfer, the day it happens as well as annually. Make sure you know the right questions to ask your adviser.

If in doubt, walk away. Safeguard your pension from the pension scammers.

Trolley’s Pension Scam Guide

December 6, 2018
Guest Blog: A new model challenge to the offshore sharks
This blog was writtern almost nine years ago by:

Carl Melvin BA (Hons), MSc, CFP, FPFS, Chartered FCSI

Certified & Chartered Financial Planner, Affiliate of the Society of Trust & Estate Practitioners, Chartered Wealth Manager.

Somethings don’t change!

A new model challenge to the offshore sharks

The arrival of wraps allows fee-based financial planners in the UK to offer a sound, client-focused service to expats, who up until recently have been easy prey to unscrupulous offshore IFAs.

The offshore environment offers unethical ‘advisers’ protect investors and ensure professional behaviour.

The offshore IFA is assisted by the offshore insurance company. Many are the international divisions of well-known UK insurance companies, which trade on their brand awareness and trust with the public. All too often, the providers create poor quality offshore plans that help the offshore IFA sell the scam to the expat investor.

Such plans exhibit the following features: l Complex charging structures – with multiple charges such as establishment fees, percentage or flat administration fees and policy charges. l Restrictive terms/lack of flexibility – the providers use obfuscation to hide the lack of flexibility, even though the offshore IFA sells the plan on the basis of flexibility. Enhanced allocation, establishment periods, surrender penalties for early termination or even reducing the level of contribution are commonplace. Such contracts are wholly unsuitable for expatriate clients.

High charges – the total costs for such plans are huge but because they are layered between multiple charge types, such as those above, the investor does not fully understand how expensive the plan is.

In short, these plans are designed to make the product provider and the offshore IFA money, rather than serve the client. Their purpose is to hide big commissions for the salesperson and the massive penalties should the client stop the plan early.

One ploy that continues is the ‘extended term’ swindle. Here, the salesman sets up the offshore ‘regular savings plan’ with a term of, say, 20 years or more, even though the expat investor may only have a work contract for three to five years in the country in question.

So why not set the plan term to three or five years? Because the longer the term, the bigger the commission. Unfortunately, if the client stops the plan or reduces the contribution level, there are often very severe penalties or administration costs. It is not uncommon for the first two or three years’ contributions to be taken in charges, leaving the investor with nothing after saving for years – outrageous!

No redress

But then, how are you going to obtain redress? The provider will say the advice was given by the adviser firm, who in turn will blame the individual adviser who happens to have left the company or country. Nor is there any effective ombudsman service to enable the client to be compensated.

The offshore IFA sector demonstrates the following qualities:
- Lack of professional standards regarding
commission disclosure and treating customers fairly rules l Low levels of professional qualification
- A sales-led approach rather than a client-centric, service-based approach l Dubious integrity and honesty
Expats often have high tax-free salaries but no UK pension scheme benefits, so there is a real need for them to engage in financial planning and invest for the future. They are vulnerable to offshore IFAs, many of whom do not behave ethically.

There is a real need for the New Model Adviser® to engage with the expat community. Such clients would benefit from the higher professional standards, transparency and lack of commission bias that is provided by a fee-only approach.

Technology now makes it possible for UK financial planners to service expat clients wherever they may be. Email and web conferencing have dissolved the barriers to service that existed before.

The emergence of wrap platforms will be the final nail in the coffin of the offshore products pedalled by offshore IFAs. Wraps offer a simple, transparent, flexible and comprehensive wealth management service for expat investors.

Offshore salesmen move aside – the new model expat adviser has arrived!

Carl Melvin (CFP) is managing director of Affluent

Financial Planning
December 5, 2018
FT Adviser Top 100 Financial Advisers 2018

I have enormous respect for FT Adviser. Their articles are written by proper journalists and they generally write competently and professionally. FT Adviser puts International Adviser to shame with their thinly-disguised promotional shows and Micky Mouse “articles” which only ever promote their own sponsors – Old Mutual International and their ilk.

It was really interesting to read FT Adviser’s recent “Top 100 Financial Advisers 2018“. I had, however, never heard of most of the advisory firms. But that is hardly surprising because nobody ever comes to me and says “guess what, I’ve got a really good adviser and am making good returns on my investments”. And I presume that all the advisory firms listed by FT Adviser are full of happy clients who never need to complain about being scammed into unsuitable investments and losing money due to a combination of high, undisclosed charges and trading losses within insurance bonds (particularly OMI’s).

However, and it is a big “however”, there are a couple of firms on the list which should have had big red asterisks against them – largely because they discredit the rankings, the other firms on the list and FT Adviser’s reputation. These are Quilter PLC and Canaccord Genuity Group.

Canaccord Genuity Group is under investigation by the FCA for non-disclosure of investment charges. Coming 24th in the top 100 list, it is very worrying that an advisory firm that lies about how much investments cost should have £990,000,000 worth of assets under management. I wonder what the investment charges are on that little lot and how much non-disclosure of related charges has gone on. Let us not forget that “non-disclosure” means lying – and with almost one billion under management that is very serious indeed.

However, Canaccord Genuity Group’s porky pies do pale into a degree of insignificance when compared to Quilter plc which came sixth with £10.3 billion worth of sales and £29 billion worth of assets under management. Quilter plc is Old Mutual International, which is the life office which helped scam hundreds of victims out of their life savings. So surely FT Adviser should have put a really bright double red asterisk against this firm on the league table? (Or perhaps they didn’t care, as Quilter was the lead sponsor?).

If Quilter is managing £29 billion worth of assets – presumably on behalf of thousands of investors – I wonder how much of this has been used to buy toxic, high-risk structured notes. As Old Mutual International seems to be claiming there is nothing wrong with destroying millions of pounds’ worth of clients’ funds by making inappropriate investments, the same must be true of Quilter plc.

Old Mutual International was buying many millions of pounds’ worth of structured notes provided by Commerzbank, Royal Bank of Canada, Nomura and Leonteq between 2010 and 2017. OMI has disclosed that at least £94 million worth of the Leonteq notes were fraudulent, and is now suing Leonteq.

I have to confess, if I were a client of Quilter plc, I would be inclined to change advisers sharpish – although most certainly not to Canaccord Genuity. Mind you, that still seems to leave 98 other firms worth considering.

But, despite the embarrassing inclusion of these two dud firms, congratulations to FT Adviser for the hard work which must have gone into producing this hit parade. This is definitely one in the eye for the hopeless nitwits at International Adviser.

December 3, 2018
International Adviser – Have I Got News For You!

International Adviser really can’t make up its mind whether it is organising a piss-up in a brewery, a news roundup carefully slewed in favour sponsors Old Mutual International, or a marketing machine. I read with interest the recent IA Industry Most Influential Top 100 described by IA thus: “we at International Adviser decided to shine a light on the movers and shakers that have helped this industry get to where it is today”.

But where exactly is the industry today? And have the so-called top 100 moved and shaken the industry in a helpful way or a detrimental way? To find out, why don’t we have a look at a few of the “influencers”. To get the measure of them, let’s put them into a game of “Have I Got News For You”:

Bob Pain in the chair as quiz master. A bloke who ran Cayman Islands-based Investors Trust until recently appointed chair of the Association of International Life Offices, the trade body for international life offices. During his 35 years of experience in financial services, he facilitated the scam run by Phillip Nunn of Blackmore Global and David Vilka of Square Mile International Financial Services. Investors Trust accepted over 1,000 investments into illegal UCIS funds for UK-based victims scammed into QROPS with Integrated Capabilities and Harbour (now STM).

As Captain of the Navel Team, let’s have dashing Tim Searle – Chairman of Dubai-based Globaleye. With his eight-year Naval history, he should make an ideal leader and would come in particularly useful in the event of icebergs, torpedos or sharks.

Captain of the Army Team I nominate as Sam Instone of AES International. His experience as an Army officer should give him the leadership skills to oppose the Navel Team. Sam’s track record as the “enemy of traditional financial services” should give him the basis for a sound battle plan.

On the Army Team, we’ll have international wealth and regulatory specialist, Phil Billingham. Phil must be utterly disgusted with the likes of Stephen Ward (another fully-qualified adviser) messing up the reputation of the profession by running a long series of pension scams and ruining thousands of lives.

And the final member of the Army team will be Paul Stanfield, CEO of FEIFA (Federation of European Independent Financial Advisers). Another real gentleman – and handsome to boot – and one who understands the importance of outlawing scammers. Several years ago he excommunicated Stephen Ward of Premier Pension Solutions from FEIFA to loud cheers from victims and industry professionals alike. (My only gripe with him would be that he still hasn’t kicked out Square Mile Financial Services run by scammers John Ferguson and David Vilka).

On the Navel Team we’ll have Geraint Davies of Montfort International – an expert IFA specialising in international financial services, and Roger Berry of Concept Group Trustees in Guernsey. These two chaps also have, between them, extensive experience of Stephen Ward in their own ways and will, no doubt, have much to talk about.

The contest will be to spot the “odd one out”: Michael Doherty of Woodbrook Group, Conor McCarthy of SEB, Peter Kenny of OMI and Winnie-the-Pooh.

Tim Searle: “They’re all Irish, except Winnie-the-Pooh who’s English?”

Geraint Davies: “They all hate Angie except Winnie-the-Pooh who’s never heard of her?”

Roger Berry: “They all love Angie except Winnie-the-Pooh who’s never heard of her?”

Sam Instone: “They’ve all got names that end in Y except Winnie-the-Pooh?”

Phil Billingham: “They’re all involved in money except Winnie-the-Pooh who’s involved in honey?”

Paul Stanfield: “None of them have applied to be members of FEIFA except Winnie-the-Pooh?”

Bob Pain: “No, you’re all wrong. The answer is Peter Kenny of OMI. The other three have been doing “nothing”: Michael Doherty was employing ex CWM scammers Dean Stogsdill and Neil Hathaway (known as Dog Kill and Hadaway) but claimed he was paying them nothing; Conor McCarthy of SEB has been asked numerous times for his comments on why SEB allowed the scammers at CWM to invest most of their victims’ funds in toxic structured notes, but McCarthy is saying nothing and won’t reply; and Winnie-the-Pool is doing nothing all the time.

The odd one out is Peter Kenny who is doing “something” and is suing Leonteq for the £94 million worth of fraudulent structured notes they sold to OMI.

November 20, 2018