Help Stop the Pension Scam
Can I ask you to help me to stop the pension scam? The new pension freedoms that the previous Chancellor introduced are largely welcome; however as ever, freedom brings responsibility. The main challenge of the new freedoms is that the money in your pension has to last… or if not, you will certainly need other resources. Making your money last a little longer than you is essentially what financial planning is all about.
Daylight Robbery
The days of holding a bank up at gun point are largely gone, cyber crime or financial fraud are the obvious choices for any career thief. Your pension fund will hopefully be one of your largest financial assets and thus something of a honeypot.
Sounds familiar?
We live in a time of very low interest rates and low investment returns, so it is often tempting to look for alternatives to reality, which in practice is anything that offers high guaranteed returns or perhaps even high returns. Invariably these are non-mainstream investments but invariably sound familiar – car parks, investment property, storage rental, film funding, hotels and casinos. Nothing you haven’t heard of… but that’s part of the deception.
If you aren’t really that familiar with investing, it can all seem rather like the same thing – its just risky stuff right? Wrong. So anyone can be tempted into giving other forms of investing a go – particularly if you believe that pensions are “rubbish” or that bankers are all evil. The perfect storm for thieves to play upon understandable concerns and a lack of knowledge.
Arming themselves with a telephone or email, they lure investors into moving their pension (generally) in exchange for high returns. They use classic cold calling pressure techniques or simply wear you down with emails and “examples” of how it works.
Many have lost their entire pensions through this.
Hence another adviser (Darren Cooke) has started a petition to ban cold calling and I’m supporting it. We are not naïve enough to believe that a ban stops thieves, but a petition can certainly inform debate at Government policy making level and hopefully result in some changes which make it far harder for people to be ripped off, it seems that relying on the regulator to do this is delusional. So can I ask you to join me in supporting the campaign.
Click here to sign the petition.
Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA
You can read more articles about Pensions, Wealth Management, Retirement, Investments, Financial Planning and Estate Planning on my blog which gets updated every week. If you would like to talk to me about your personal wealth planning and how we can make you stay wealthier for longer then please get in touch by calling 08000 736 273 or email info@solomonsifa.co.uk