For over a decade, life offices (more accurately known as “death” offices) have been the centre of millions of pounds’ worth of destroyed pensions. So here we are going to name the top 3 worst life offices… These are just some of the things they’ve been up to: Collaborating with scammers: unregulated, rogue firms posing …
Spain is, sadly, the World’s capital of wealth scamming. For more than a decade, wealth planning has been perverted and converted into a commission-laden fraud. This financial crime has relieved thousands of victims of their pensions and life savings. Originally a private Swiss bank, Julius Baer now wants to diversify into the Spanish wealth market. …
Our last blog in this series recreated the offshore pension scam process. We covered the set up and hard sell. The slick salesman prepared the unwitting victim and convinced him his pension would be better off out of the UK. The silver-tongued spiv, Darren, posing as an adviser, conned his new client with no problem …
I don’t often disagree with highly-regarded pensions expert Henry Tapper. Too much respect and awe. But his recent blog: “The Balls of Old Bailey” (about Andrew Bailey) merits a polite argument. It has made me cross – not cross with Henry, per se. But cross with the failure of Britain’s culture, government, regulation and legal …
On the web of pension scams It seems as though criminal convictions against pension scammers might be getting popular. More than a decade has gone by with virtually none of the usual suspects getting jailed – despite a few criminal investigations (that, so far, have not resulted in convictions). Is the system really that hopeless …
Every offshore pension scam starts with a “financial advisor”. Or, at least, a slick salesman posing as a financial adviser. This person can also call himself a “wealth consultant” or “senior associate”. After the scammer pretending to be an adviser, the next player is the life office. More accurately described as a “death” office, this …
At the end of January 2022, Boris Johnson claimed he had reduced crime by 14%. Boris shocked a lot of people with this figure. But, apparently, he wasn’t talking about fraud. He’d forgotten that even some of his own constituents had been defrauded into the Ark pension scam (and that he had promised to “sort …
2021 was a tough year for everybody in the world. But for Pension Life it was especially frustrating because courts and law firms were severely held up as they got to grips with the challenges of Covid, travel restrictions and working remotely. Attending hearings and meetings by video conference was a hit-or-miss affair. The success …
The world of pension and investment scams is dominated and driven by commissions on investments (usually unregulated). The scammers’ strategy is always identical: get the pensions away from the safety of a reputable pension provider and into the hands of a SIPP, a SSAS or a QROPS. One purported benefit of these types of schemes …
haps “the end” will be just the beginning. A new dawn for an offshore financial services industry which sells proper financial advice – and not just commission-laden products.
The FCA seems to have woken up. It only took eleven years. Eleven years of laziness, torpor, disinterest and deliberately ignoring the problem. But, completely out of the blue, the FCA has suddenly got bored with crapping on bathroom floors and has decided to do a spot of rather belated regulating. The object of this …
Utmost (formerly Generali) is proposing buying Quilter (formerly Old Mutual). The deal is due to be completed by December 2021. The agreed price is nearly half a billion pounds. It is reported that Margrethe Vestager, Vice President of the European Commission, has “approved” this acquisition. The “approval” by the European Commission of this deal is …
