Financial mis-selling occurs when you act on the advice of a financial advisor or a professional by investing in a particular financial product, and because the advice was inadequate or misleading, you have suffered a financial loss.
For example, if you had a defined benefit pension with your employer and your financial advisor recommended that you transfer your defined benefit pension to a new personal pension or SIPP (a self-invested personal pension), it is likely you have suffered from financial mis-selling.
The reason for this is a defined benefit pension (which is most often provided by the public sector, such as in health, education etc and by government employers), will usually guarantee certain pension benefits, such as being indexed linked which will increase in value with inflation, they promise a guaranteed income on retirement, are secure and protected up to 90% of their value by the Pension Protection Fund, they can offer a Death in Service benefit to a spouse and can include a tax -free draw down at a certain age or if suffering from ill-health.
Obtaining a new personal pension or SIPP that would offer similar benefits to a defined benefit pension is unlikely on today’s market, and if you were not made aware that your new pension would lose the guarantees of your defined benefit pension, you may be entitled to make a claim for compensation.
How Ison Harrison establish if you have a claim
Our Professional Negligence team will initially consider what you instructed the financial advisor or professional to do, and consider any agreement between you and your financial advisor or professional, to establish what duty was owed to you.
Once we have established that the financial advisor or professional has breached their duty to you, for example by recommending an unsuitable product to invest in, we will assess the losses you have incurred and we will advise you on the most appropriate course of action, to place you back in the position had the financial advisor or professional not breached their duty to you, and seek to obtain the compensation or redress you are owed.
The first course of action would be to make a complaint directly to the financial advisor or professional via the financial advisor or professional’s own complaints handling procedure. Should the financial advisor or professional not uphold your complaint, it may be possible to raise a complaint with the Financial Ombudsman Service for compensation, or alternatively legal proceedings can be commenced to seek compensation and to remedy any loss.
If the financial advisor/professional or firm are no longer in existence or trading, it may be possible to raise a complaint with the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, albeit both the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme have limits to the amount of compensation they can award.
Choosing the most appropriate route to recovering compensation can be complicated, and it is always sensible to seek professional advice in such circumstances, especially when considering the amount of loss and any time limits on pursuing such claims.
Below are just a few examples of the types of financial products that could have been mis-sold to you:
- Pensions;
- Annuities;
- Mortgages;
- Insurance;
- Shares;
- Trusts;
- Hedge funds.
Our specialist Professional Negligence team has over 20 years’ experience in the field and are renowned for our strong and sensible approach to dispute resolution and litigation.
Contact the Professional Negligence Team
Please contact Chris Thomson at chris.thomson@isonharrison.co.uk or Jonathan Robson at jonathan.robson@isonharrison.co.uk
