Ban Cold Calling Pension Scammers

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Ban Cold Calling Pension Scammers

Since my post on 25 October about a petition by one of my peers to attempt to encourage the Government to address the problem of people being swindled out of their pensions, there is now a new dedicated website. Can I ask that you get involved by signing the petition and sharing it with your contacts.

Why? Well, if you are a client of ours you have protection and have our support and regulated advice. The new pension freedoms mean that many people in their late 50’s or older are being targetted to move their pensions into some very poor (rip off) arrangements. OK, so this may not be you, but pension funds can now last a lifetime, rather than until retirement, which was normally when people bought an annuity. Now most are holding the investments for life, meaning that ongoing advice will be required (to get the portfolio delivering what is needed each year)… but that also means that long after I retire you will likely still need advice for your pension portfolio. So imagine yourself in 15, 20, 25 or 30 years time, being bombarded by calls or emails promising you all sorts of wonderful things…. are you really going to resist?

So please sign the petition, we need to push through to 10,000 signatures. OK cold calling may not be banned, but the issue being raised may result in new policy or regulation that protects people from this.

BAN COLD CALLING WEBSITE

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

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.

movie poster the Sting starring Newman and Redford

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