john banks

My wife was employed by a company for a fairly short time and has a pension with a transfer value of about £4000. She is not allowed to keep the funds in the company's scheme because her duration of service wasn't long enough.

She decided that she wanted the money in a Scottish Widows UK index tracker fund as a one-off contribution. She approached Moneyworld IFA who have got so far through the process and the funds have been moved to Scottish Widows.

It now transpires that Scottish Widows can't do anything with the money and will have to return it because Moneyworld are not authorised to deal with final salary pension scheme transfers which apparently they've only just discovered her scheme was.

They say they don't know anyone else that will do it either even if she signs disclaimers to say she is happy with what she's doing.

It isn't like she has the option not to transfer it somewhere else unless she takes the cash option (which is less than £1000 because she also has to opt back into some national insurance contributions I gather).

Sounds like regulation gone mad as usual, it should be a simple transfer of a small amount, but she doesn't want to pay excessive charges to just put a small amount into an index tracker pension fund hence the thought of execution only.

David_Wallis

Send Steven a PM, Im sure he has a pensions bloke at his accountancy

LG John

I can't help.......but I have noticed you like a bit of financial tom-foolery

EddScott

The transferring scheme are under no obligation to receive the money back.

Personally, I would get the number and the name from Moneyworld of who they are dealing with in Scot Wids - either your wife or Moneyworld themselves and tell Scot Wid to hold on to the money and just put a hold on processing the application.

Then, go and find an IFA practice that has a G60 qualified IFA who is authorised to carry out these types of transfer. We have 3 in our practice.

I'd probably speak to Scot Wids direct and tell them to complete the application and stop being silly.

If you don't get anywhere, in the words of our MD "GO HIGHER" He loves that saying.

john banks

Thanks EddScott, I'll get her to go down that line tomorrow.

Thanks for the tip David.

Kenny, I feel if I don't get informed and manage the situation then it will reduce future options.

fast bloke

John, speak to Scottish Widows directly - you shouldn't have a problem with transferring the fund. "Go Higher" always gets results.

I think Moneyworld may well have a bunch of people who are well capable of dealing with the transfer, but they are not approved to 'advise' on final salary schemes. Regulation is now getting to a point where you can't do anything on an execution only basis. If someone calls me and tells me they want 500k of life cover I can't even do that. I have to 'know my client' and make an appropriate recommendation. I can see the benefits of regulation to protect the less financially astute punter, but we used to have an option to do everything on an execution only basis if we were satisfied that the client would have a full understanding of what they were doing. The rules are different for insurance companies though - They do not offer advice, so there shouldn't be a problem with a direct execution only transaction.

Bubba po

Have you purchased the right to give out advice like this, FB?

fast bloke

No financial advice given Bubba - Merely advice on possible directions.

<runs spellchecker now that he knows Bubba is in>

john banks

Thanks FB

The crazy thing is that you can take the money and run (albeit a much reduced sum) without any financial advice. For most this would be a far less astute financial decision in the long term.

The money laundering regs are also a PITA. You can't even open a savings account without all this nonsense to trasfer wholly uninteresting sums of money in the grand scheme of things.

All of this stuff is like swimming through treacle!

fast bloke

Try working with it day in day out - A 'properly' completed mortgage for someone who is consolidating a couple of grand of debt and has missed a payment on a credit card will generate well over 100 pages of 'information'

A 50 quid a month standalone ISA (for which I would get paid about 4p ) can take up to 8 hours and generate about 30 pages of 'information' -

who reads this 'information' - I would guess that less than 1% of people read every page.

Funniest thing I have come across - I was arranging a life policy for my father - came to money laundering - he doesn't have a passport and had sent his DL off to get three points added (LMFAO at that one cos he blamed me) - I couldn't put the policy on risk because I couldn't provide documentary evidence of his identity. OK - Maybe he isn't who he says he is, in which case I am not who I think I am, but the FSA have given me the go ahead to **** about with people futures, even though they can have no idea who I might be? Sadly you can't accomodate common sense in a tick box

Bubba po

Good lad.

How are you going on with the recuperation from the accident?

fast bloke

The boat one or the tree one?

Bubba po

The boat one! Tell us about the tree one, Tarzan.

EddScott

fast bloke - how the hell do you get time to complete your suitability letters with a 24K post count?



Glad we're not the only ones drowning in regulation. Theres a massive amount of paperwork just to see a new client - Terms of biz, Fact Find, Menu (Veals off ), Initial Disclosure, Money Laundering.

Good to see the "Go Higher" trick works with others

David_Wallis

can I recommend Know Your Customer - Anti-money laundering and verification