FT Adviser (19/06/2019) – Almost 10,000 customers who were advised against transferring out of their defined benefit pension scheme ended up doing so on an insistent basis, according to the Financial Conduct Authority.
The regulator today (June 19) published the results of its survey of 3,015 firms between April 2015 and September 2018, which concluded that too much DB transfer advice was “still not of an acceptable standard”.
The data showed of those advised not to transfer, 13 per cent (9,534 people) did so anyway, with 26 per cent of the firms surveyed facilitating transfers for insistent clients.
However, Megan Butler, FCA’s executive director of supervision, wholesale and specialists, said at this stage the regulator was not drawing any conclusions from these findings.
She told FTAdviser: “We need to do more work with the firms whom we have identified they have insistent clients. If a firm has a particular high number of insistent clients that would be a factor we would take into account when prioritising our work with them.”
Ricky Chan, chartered financial planner and director at IFS Wealth & Pensions, said firms should stop accepting insistent clients, but he understands why they choose not to.
He said: “The requirement is only that clients seek independent advice – it does not state that the advice must be a positive recommendation.
“The FCA has provided a clear three-step process in dealing with insistent clients, and provided the clients are truly insistent clients I don’t see a problem.
“Clients need to accept responsibility for their own actions, which worryingly we rarely see in current times. It’s their own money at the end of the day and everyone makes sometimes irrational and seemingly ‘silly’ decisions to a third party.”
Full article link: https://www.ftadviser.com/pensions/2019/06/19/fca-reveals-insistent-client-numbers/
