Wills & Co, is a stockbroker that the FSA took action against. This was for selling high risk investments (penny shares) and the FSA say that Wills & Co failed to properly explain the high level of investment risk involved. As a consequence the FSA fined the firm £49,000 and removed their license in February 2010. A floodgate was opened for people that had lost money to obtain compensation. Wills & Co acted very quickly to satisfy the FSA and as a result had a discount on their fine. The FSCS has already awarded over £650,000 in compensation costs to their clients which has pushed the firm into the position where they have had to close.

I have no idea if the FSA are/were right, whether Wills & Co explained risk properly or not – that is not my gripe. There is certainly an interesting video on the Wills & Co site which provides their point of view.

My gripe is that the tab for the clean up is passed around IFAs – who have nothing to do with this. We (the IFA community) will meekly roll over and cough up… or eventually run out of funds ourselves in the process.

The costs are inevitably passed on to clients. The system is completely wrong. I can just about come to terms with the notion that as an IFA I have to put my hand in my pocket to pay for the errors of complete sharks that are IFAs… but stockbrokers too? our financial system is daft.