Firing Line: Neil Pointon

Neil Pointon’s career started, rather inauspiciously, in a potato field.

Born in rural Leicestershire, the chief executive of PYV recalls trailing behind a tractor in freezing mud, aged 11. He said: “I only had small hands at the time, and they paid you on the size of your hands as to how many potatoes you could pick up.”

Fed up after just a day of spud-picking manual labour, he went down to the local shop and spent all his wages on two bars of chocolate. He said: “I thought that was poor value. Farm work was not for me.”

In the end, Mr Pointon found financial services far more satisfying, and now runs one of the best known professional indemnity insurance providers, at a time when advice over investment portfolios is coming under pressure, and clients' belief in their advisers is being seriously tested.

Mr Pointon said: “The credit crunch conditions are likely to drive more and more claims against financial advisers. Wherever people make losses, claims rise. And if the claims frequency increases there is bound to be a knock-on effect sooner or later for PI premiums.”

Thus far, financial advisers have remained relatively unscathed by the credit crunch in terms of complaints. According to the Financial Ombudsman Service’s annual report, claims against IFAs decreased from 4 per cent in 2007 to 3 per cent of total complaints last year.

Mr Pointon said: “It would appear that the vast majority of complaints in this field are going against the providers direct, rather than any advised business, and that has to be recognised when any underwriter is considering what rates to apply for a particular field.”

However, Mr Pointon said this will also change over the next 12 months: “When times are good people do not stop and check to see any problems. Any errors are forgiven because everything is going well. It is only when times are bad that errors are punished. So yes, the credit crunch is bound to draw out an increase in claims circumstances.”

In addition, Mr Pointon said the Fos figures do not necessarily reflect the true volume of claims against IFAs, and that many complaints will take longer to come to light. He said: “We would consider that the increase in volumes would continue over the next couple of years.”

Mr Pointon comes from a distinguished financial services background. His father, Geoffrey Pointon claims to have been the first executive to venture into small self-administered schemes and self-invested personal pensions.

So, with a career in agriculture firmly crossed off the list, Mr Pointon soon decided to follow in his father's footsteps. In 1971, Mr Pointon Senior and business partner Sid York established the Pointon York Ltd life, pensions and general insurance brokerage that would eventually become PYV.