Have you been scammed?

According to a recent report for LV, roughly one in seven adults have been the subject of an attempted pension scam in the last 12 months! That’s an enormous number, translating into about 7.3 million people.

A staggering 14% were encouraged to transfer money from their pensions by text message. It may interest you to note that about 4 million British adults lost money to such scams over the same period. That is an awful lot and begs the question – are the regulators really focussing on the right things?

Pensions are both simple and complex. Simple in the sense that they are a savings plan that you access to provide income in your retirement.  Ideally this needs to last for the remainder of your lifetime, which then presents the inevitable question “how much is enough?” which of course is subjective and dependant on your expectations and lifestyle.

Pension rules are ludicrously complicated, made by successive Governments, each of which has been utterly lacking any long-term thinking. Complexity is perhaps a double-edged sword. Most people know enough to realise that they probably need advice, but the cost of this is prohibitive.  A lot of the cost is due to regulation, but in fairness most of the regulation is well intended.

A problem we all face is that scammers are getting better. Deepfake technology makes a decent scam difficult to spot.  It is relatively easy to set up an email, phone number and website that all look perfectly legitimate. Something like 36% of scams were reported as fake HMRC emails and text messages.

Regulators, pension companies and advisers would all likely say the same thing – please seek advice. The scam rate amongst regulated advisers is very low (contrary to press-driven opinion). The majority of scams take place through the everyday technology you use at home. If you come across friends or family who you suspect may be about to make a catastrophic blunder, please (please!) get them to call us. Certainly not everyone is going to be a suitable client for us, but if we can save someone from self-destruction, we are happy to take calls or emails.

Don’t wait for a friend to get scammed, get them in touch with us, so that we can ensure that they don’t get caught out.