Two trustees of Capita Oak (COPS) and the Henley Retirement Benefit Scheme (HRBS) have been wound up, the Insolvency Service has announced.
The investigation found Omni Trustees Ltd and Imperial Trustee Services Ltd were involved in a scheme by which members of the public were cold-called and persuaded to transfer their existing occupational pensions into either HRBS or COPS.
This, the Insolvency Service said, was on the basis of misrepresentations made as to an initial guaranteed rate of return and also on the promise of an entitlement to receive 25 per cent of the fund value at age 55 and, in the case of COPS, of a 5 per cent non repayable ‘loan’.
Between July 2012 and September 2013 a total of £10.8m was transferred into COPS while between December 2012 and January 2014 a further £8.6m was transferred into HRBS.
Of the total sum, £13.4m was invested in storage pods while a further £3.7m belonging to HRBS was transferred to another occupational scheme and cannot currently be accounted for.
Scott Crighton, group leader at the Insolvency Service, said: “For their own protection, members of the public need to be wary of any uninvited contact offering them a free pension review and to be aware that many of the products on offer are unregulated and high risk or may even be outright scams, and so the safest course of action is to simply ignore them.”
