Your headline “Hospitalised IFA ‘hounded’ by Fos over complaints” (FA, 1 October) caught my eye. Clearly, I am sorry to hear that Mr Lewis is unwell, but Fos left things in abeyance for a year before moving forward.
At some point there does have to be closure for victims and the ludicrous pillorying of Fos for seeking to facilitate that is absurd. I have read the final decisions against this firm, and frankly wish I had not. I will be waking up in a cold sweat for months. A whole of life policy sold for inheritance tax planning when the existing policies could simply have been written in trust for the same purpose, repeated trashing of pension commencement lump sums to reinvest in “bonds” and arranging for a client to take a withdrawal of £32,000 from a bond so it could be given back to the adviser as a “loan”. Gulp. I am trying to think of a word to sum this up and I am going to settle on “terrifying”.
IFAs use these pages to moan about their FSCS levies. Do they see any connection with the above? Probably not. I note that this firm and adviser are “no longer authorised”, so you never know your luck.
Andrew Hummersone
Chartered Financial Planner,
Whitehall Randall,
Dartford,
Kent
