Pensions Ombudsman pushes pension transfer liability onto Occupational scheme
Written on 10/08/2018
Mr N complained that the Police Authority transferred his pension fund to a new pension scheme without having conducted adequate checks in relation to the receiving scheme.
It turns out that Mr N’s pension fund has pretty much all been lost or misappropriated in rip off schemes. The Pension Ombudsman’s Determination was that the complaint is upheld against the Authority because it
“failed to conduct adequate checks and enquiries in relation to Mr N’s new pension scheme; failed to send Mr N the Pensions Regulator’s transfer fraud warning leaflet; and failed to engage directly with Mr N.â€
Why is this important to you?
This is alarming for IFAs because it means further counterparty-scrutiny, and the possibility of schemes refusing to allow the transfer out of their own schemes, citing their suspicions. Put it another way, if the occupational pension scheme has suspicions about you, they could be advised, quite sensibly, to refuse to deal with you!
This will work fine for rogue advisers, but as usual many innocent parties will get caught up – just in the same way as many perfectly good mortgage advisers have been chucked off panels, and latterly re-instated.
For once it is not the FSCS paying out the compensation for a rogue adviser.
In fact it may have been limited here, because the underlying investment chosen was another occupational pension scheme, used as a front to a pension liberation scheme.
August 2018
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