The Pension Scams Industry Group (PSIG) has carried out a pilot survey on pension scams. The survey has identified seven key findings and concluded that most scams are carried out by rogue advisers and unregulated “introducers”. This is something we write about regularly, so it is great that PSIG has finally caught up.
Henry Tapper wrote a blog about the survey, ‘Shining light on pension scams.‘ He wrote:
“Another significant concern was member awareness of advice. PSIG stated, after they found in almost half (49 per cent) of cases, the member had limited understanding or appeared to be unaware who was providing the advice, the fees being charged, or the receiving scheme to which the transfer would be made.”
A lack of understanding of the way the financial industry works is something that the scammers play on.
Many of our blogs here at Pension Life focus on getting information across to the public. You owe it to yourself to understand how the pension system works. This understanding will empower you and your money, protecting it from the scammers. We provide the platform for this information, you just need to read it.
However, time and time again we find we hit brick walls when sharing information.
Our blogs are shared on lots of social media networks. I find in many cases – especially on Facebook – that the links to our blogs will get deleted after the admins refuse to approve them. Some readers state that the blogs we write about expat scams are not relevant to expat issues.
We have been told that our blogs which highlight what questions to ask your adviser are of a commercial and marketing nature. Yet in none of our blogs do we try to sell anything – we just offer knowledge and warnings about how to safeguard your pension.
When met with this negativity, how do we get the information out there? How do we educate the public?
Future unaware victims need to know what to look out for and how to avoid a scam. Otherwise, the cycle will continue. The scammers will outsmart the public and they will continue to get rich off the ignorance of the public. And the victims will continue to see their life savings vanish.
As the saying goes, “ignorance is bliss”. However, if the ignorance leads to you signing your life savings over to a rogue financial adviser – whose only interest is purloining as much of your fund as possible – ignorance is in fact negligence.
You may think you can trust a financial adviser, but we live in a world full of scammers and crooks – quite a few of which are financial advisers. Some of them are very greedy and will stop at nothing to fatten their bank balance at your expense. They have no conscience when it comes to living a lavish lifestyle funded from another’s grim fate.
At school, they teach us about history, geography, maths and more. There is no subject about how to look after your money. Basic education on how to look after our pennies or how to finance our future is not included in the curriculum.
Knowledge is important when it comes to your finances.
I can honestly say that before I started this job, I knew very little about pensions and how they work. I simply knew that a pension was something you get when you are ‘old’.
But ‘old’ comes round too quickly. Whilst working hard, building, saving and living your life. Time flies by.
It is all too easy for a rogue adviser to contact you out of the blue about a
“free pension review” and lure you into a scam.
At Pension Life, we are dedicating our time and words to help educate and inform you about pensions. Our blogs are full of information about scams, what questions to ask when transferring your pension and how to avoid falling victim to a scam.
Make sure you know what questions to ask your IFA.
Above all else – safeguard your pension from the scammers.
Don’t spend your life saving for your future, just to let a rogue adviser snatch it away and spend it on theirs.
We have put together ten essential standards that we believe every financial adviser and their firm should adhere to. Make sure you read the blog and ensure your financial adviser can meet these standards. If he can´t – find one that can.
Phillip Nunn isn’t an adviser and has never purported to being one. The adviser in league with Nunn & McCreesh and the Blackmore Global fund that many victims transferred their pensions into was David Vilka of Square Mile International Financial.
It would have been more accurate to picture David Vilka – https://pension-life.com/not-so-square-mile-and-far-from-lilly-white/ – and – https://pension-life.com/square-mile-international-financial-services-qualified-and-registered/ – the latter written by Kim!
“I can honestly say that before I started this job, I knew very little about pensions and how they work.” – you still don’t.
“At Pension Life, we are dedicating our time and words to help educate and inform you about pensions.” – Sisyphean task.
“Potential” victims don’t read it. I seriously doubt these blogs are read by people about to be scammed but rather by people already finding themselves a victim, or by people “involved in the pensions industry” – like Henry Tapper for example and of course by the scammers themselves! I am not aware of any blog getting a comment from a potential victim thanking the site for a narrow escape …. I doubt you have “saved” anyone from falling for a scam. Coupled with the useless, impotent authorities this site is just a thorn in the side of the scammers but hardly delivers any fatal blows to their activities. The new black for scammers is a move into the mini bonds and, looking at the prolific blogging by bondreview – https://bondreview.co.uk/ – the scamming business is thriving, making the likes of the few – e.g. Phillip Nunn – rich beyond measure at the expense of financial ruin for the many.
“We have put together ten essential standards that we believe every financial adviser and their firm should adhere to. Make sure you read the blog and ensure your financial adviser can meet these standards. If he can´t – find one that can.”
According to one comment to a blog at Bondreview, these mini bonds – the new black for scammers – are not being sold by “advisors” so the top ten essential standards could well be irrelevant. The new method adopted for fleecing the vulnerable doesn’t use “advisory” firms – qualified or not.
What would be useful would be if, in cooperation with bondreview, the new scamming mechanism was opened up and the perpetrators called out – bondreview doesn’t have the courage to go all out like this site does, for fear of litigation, not something that has ever stopped Angie.
Are these mini bonds being purchased from pension transfers via SIPPS or QROPS and who is giving the unregulated advice?
The scammers have got ahead of the game and pension-life.com appears to have fallen behind.
LCF has turned out to be a PONZI scheme of immense proportion and seems only to have got on pension-life’s radar in March of this year! Bondreview reviewed it in Dec 2017, https://bondreview.co.uk/2017/12/15/london-capital-finance/
A year ago, Angie reported on Paul Careless of Surge Financial – https://pension-life.com/blackmore-bond-shaken-not-stirred-careless-or-stupid/ – in connection with a bait-and-switch tactic to the benefit Blackmore Bonds. bondreview was the first to uncover that story but took it down following litigation threats from Surge, Angie also received same pathetic threats but called their bluff. That’s what Angie is good at.
Surge continues to get 20% commission for promoting high risk, unregulated mini bonds – including LCF and Blackmore Bonds. I can’t help feeling these website promotions of unregulated bonds contravenes FCA rules. I can’t help feeling the investors are retail clients and I can’t believe there isn’t some “advice” given somewhere in the process by someone.
There is a synergy here, between Angie and Brev, that I believe could be favourably exploited. There needs to be much more focus on the companies promoting these mini bonds. Surge is clearly a big player in this market and more scrutiny is needed.
Could Careless be the new Ward, xxxx or Vilka/Fergusson?
Stephen, as far as victims of pension scammers go, you’re one of the lucky ones who got back most of their money. There are thousands scattered around the globe who haven’t been as fortunate. I’ve tried to help many but few have found any justice at all and the known scammers just carry on as before.
You comment regularly on this website, so presume you read every post. I don’t know what your level of knowledge is, but for many of us who’ve seen the carnage over more than a decade, surely the constant elephant in the room, even to you, is the absence of deVere’s name alongside their partners in crime like Generali, RL360, OMI and the like. Until deVere and Nigel Green are listed on this website alongside these scammers, Pension-Life deserves no credibility. Angie has never answered questions on her relationship with deVere and why she never ever mentions them. They’re to pension transfer scams as Queen Elizabeth is to the Royal Family – THEE top dog!
Karma is a terrible thing and Angie will feel the full force if she doesn’t disclose the truth …. or change. It’s never too late for that.
Absolutely agree with the comment. Great work is done by this site, but now the pension transfer loopholes are finally being closed, the scammers have moved onto direct to consumer unregulated product promotion using Fakebook ads and fake five star reviews. Uk regulated financial advisers involved in pension transfers into unregulated investments will largely be covered by the FSCS and FOS. It’s the unregulated products themselves that are the problem. All financial products should be approved by a regulator before being sold to retail investors.