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Unwrapping the Moneywise fine
September 2nd, 2010
2.5.
More specifically, Moneywise did not take reasonable steps in the relevant period to ensure that:
(1)
before including unregulated collective investment schemes (“UCIS”) in its portfolios it understood and considered whether it would be subject to the statutory restriction on the promotion of UCIS to retail customers in section 238 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000;
(2)
within its sales process it established and documented each customer’s knowledge and experience of UCIS, so that it could have regard to each customer’s specific information needs when communicating with them about the recommended portfolios and the underlying investments;
(3)
suitability reports and other communications sent to its customers were explicit about the fact that some of the underlying investments included in the portfolios were UCIS which were not in themselves covered by the Financial Ombudsman Service (“FOS”) or the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (“FSCS”);
(4)
it took a structured approach to reviewing advisers’ customer files, giving feedback to advisers, and identifying and correcting deficiencies in fact finds and ..read more
Freedom of Information gives a little bit more freedom to IFAs
September 2nd, 2010Tony Blair counts himself as an idiot for bringing in all the Freedom of Information legislation. Of all the things the former PM could have chosen to want to go back and do all over again it’s this, the thing that at least in part let us know what his Government was up to.
Gosh.
Now this has a financial services implication. First, it could, though it probably won’t, give an excuse for some restrictions further down the line. This would be, as I think almost every adviser understands, very bad news.
This FoI legislation has proved to be one of the few checks on the FSA and to a lesser degree the Treasury when both have very few checks on their power. Yes it is irritating and occasionally even I have wondered, if quite the right questions were being asked, sometimes about the habits of individual regulators. But we can at least see exactly what the regulator is spending the regulateds’ money ..read more
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Is Blair suggesting Brown would have means-tested the state pension?
September 1st, 2010Further to today’s earlier post, Money Marketing tells me that Tony Blair explained part of the disagreement with Gordon Brown thus -
Blair adds:“(Brown) was in favour of rebalancing rich and poor in provision of the basic state pension. I was totally opposed to that. I felt the public at large would consider the basic state pension as their ‘dividend’ or ‘entitlement’ for their national insurance contributions.”
I will investigate this further but to me that reads like Brown wanted to rebalance - for which read redistribute - the state pension, which means he was suggesting even more means-testing.
Now this may all have been simply a matter of trying to obstruct a reform Brown didn’t like. Certainly I don’t remember any such plans leaking. If it had, surely the headlines would have read “Brown wants to means test the state pension.”
It is however eerily similar to an accusation Blair made in public about the Tories’ pension plans just before the 1997 election, though in that case ..read more
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Omo: 1 Nomo: Nil.
August 25th, 2010An ABI missive to members has been intercepted by Money Marketing. The Government, in the guise of the Treasury’s increasingly famous Mark Hoban, is threatening a regulatory crackdown on OMO. It looks like the Pension Income Choice Association has scored a bit of a victory or at least is winning the match.
Here is the story from pensions journalist Helen Pow who is unfortunately leaving these shores to return to Oz. Story wise, this is a cracking parting shot.
http://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/pensions/govt-cracking-down-with-tough-line-on-omo/1017420.article
It is good news that ministers are getting so exercised about people not exercising OMO. The Money Debate has been arguing for this too, asking why on earth, when lawyers and claims chasers are talking of legal action against firms for not properly informing about or processing the OMO, regulators haven’t stepped in to make sure it happens. It is better than have things sorted out after the fact by ombudsman or courts or some sort of class action.
Actually in the recent weeks, ..read more
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April FOS day
August 26th, 2010I must say I really did think it was April FOS day when I read of the FOS taking part in National Complaints Day. The FOS admittedly wasn’t directly offering an Ipad for best complaint, but the organising firm Complaint Community was.
Any complaints system, any Ombudsman system, particularly a free one, ought to tread carefully. It has to promote its service – better than the alternative of course, but it has to be careful not to stir up unfair claims. This shows it isn’t doing anything of the sort.
I think it is also time that the FOS adjudications were vetted, i.e. take a number of files across different categories of cases, and have them checked for fairness to both parties to the dispute and for consistency.
Whether you want a FOS to exist or not, if it is run the wrong way it is a huge drag on saving and investing levels, it makes doing all sorts of business for all sorts ..read more
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Personal accounts and blackmail. Who’d have thought it?
September 1st, 2010Look – pensions on the front page again! Sort of.
We now know that Tony Blair felt he was effectively blackmailed by Gordon Brown over the Government’s policy response to Adair Turner’s pensions review.
Gordon Brown allegedly suggested that he would push forward an internal Labour party investigation into loans for honours if Blair embraced Turner. Blair did. There was an investigation. Anyway this much we know from today’s papers.
No-one says exactly what it was Brown objected to about the pension reform. Just Adair Turner himself? The suggested need to increase the state retirement age? The perceived difficulty of balancing the need for a low cost pension with need to incentivise existing distribution (that’s you) to distribute something? It could be Turner’s criticism or at least concerns about mean-testing? That could be it.
Yet it might simply be the fact that the proposed personal accounts as became Nest/auto-enrolment system wasn’t Brown’s baby and in Brown’s mind he was chief executive and Blair just the Chairman in charge of stuff like badly planned wars.
Maybe Brown saw all sorts of problems with implementation ..read more
The FOS has continually claimed ‘independence’ and argued that it is not a consumer champion and does not encourage claims.
This ill-thought out dallying with seedy claims promoters does nothing to dispel such views. Far worse, it confirms in the minds of advisers that they are partisan and therefore unworthy.
The new Chief Ombudsman was formerly in charge of the British Library and one would have hoped that at some stage she would have ingested the meaning of ‘balanced and fair’ from the tomes that surrounded her daily.
That’s ‘daily’ by the way, not ‘Daley’ as in Arthur.
You just could not make it up…
Who at the FOS thought this was wise…?