Sidewalk Solutions

The FSA’s new “leader” Lord Turner wants more money and resources – the fact that the FSA is a failed organisation and has its own responsibilities for the financial mess that has occurred in the UK – somehow doesn’t matter. In the Brown way of thinking – we should throw good money after bad, and as a result make more bad money. 2,500 professional service people is not enough for Lord Turner. When will we ever do what we need to do – with what we already have – rather than think spending more money will solve everything? Lord Turner – sweat your current assets first!

I had occasion a few years ago to transfer some money from a company pension scheme into a SIPP. The professional services (as they call themselves) employees between the holding Trustees and the new SIPP managers – managed to make this transaction last months, a habit that the Financial Services Professionals are very good at in order to justify their extortionate fees. Eventually I received a statement from my new SIPP pension. Being a Scot I decided to check their sums.

It must have taken me all of 10 minutes to work out that £1,000 + £1,000 was not £1,500. So I checked it again and again – surely these professionally trained and over-paid people could not have gotten such a simple sum wrong? So I called the SIPP people and said – it’s £2,000 not £1,500 I said. “Sorry – but you are wrong – £1,000+£1,000 is £1,500″ was their reply. After several more months of letter writing – I was advised to take my complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service . You guessed it – the FOS took many months to come up with the conclusion that £1,000+£1,000 did indeed come to £1,500. Don’t be fooled by the FOS web site – they admitted to me that my complaint was not “allocated to an adjudicator” for several months, due to the volume of cases! So they never even addressed my complaint for 3 months, then it took them another 3 months to get a response from the SIPP managers. Finally the FOS concluded that I should accept a £100 ex-gratia payment from the SIPP managers for “the inconvenience and distress they had caused”. Their considered view was that £1000+£1,000 had always equaled £1,500 and I should consider accepting the £100 compensation.

Not a bit of it – I put new batteries in my calculator and kept my powder dry – continuing with my complaint. On the 3rd anniversary of signing the forms to move my private pension to a SIPP I received a letter from the SIPP managers saying that £1,000+£1,000 = £2,000 + compensation and would I please accept this new offer!

In the 3 year period I never received an apology or explanation from any professional service person or company involved in my case. The FOS in their final letter stated “while it would have been good practice in my view for an explanation to have been given (by the SIPP managers) we would not expect, or be able to compel, a professional services firm to explain what happened. Even when they can’t add up?

So be warned – the financial service professionals and the FOS are not the best at Arithmetic - pretty good at being slow, underutilizing their assets and charging high fees though!