The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) has received 34 claims about bad advice against Active Wealth, a now collapsed firm involved in the British Steel pension transfer scandal.
The complaints have been lodged since Active Wealth entered voluntary liquidation, on 12 February, months after the firm was told to cease any pension transfer activity by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
The FSCS said, at the time, that it was working closely with the FCA to understand the firm’s position.
Mark Neale, FSCS’s chief executive, said the body was prepared to start considering claims as soon as it received them.
FTAdviser reported in November that several members of the British Steel Pension Scheme (BSPS) appeared to be transferring out their pensions after being lured by cheap deals by unregulated introducer firm Celtic Wealth Management & Financial Planning, which then referred the clients to regulated advice firm Active Wealth.
It emerged in February that the firm had advised as many as 300 BSPS clients, of which 64 proceeded to transfer out of the BSPS scheme into alternative pension arrangements without taking further advice.
Some of these clients saw their pension pots being invested in self-invested personal pension (Sipp) providers, such as Momentum Pensions, and managed by Gallium Fund Solutions, a Kent-based discretionary investment manager.
In the meantime, a group of steelworkers in Port Talbot has instructed a solicitor firm to pursue a legal case against all parties involved in the pension transfer scandal.
Philippa Hann, partner at law firm Clarke Wilmott, is representing the steelworkers.
The firm has offered the steelworkers a flat fee of £500 to assist with their claims going to the FSCS, and a no-win-no-fee for claims relating to other potential defendants.
FTAdviser reported last week that solicitors offering to help steelworkers bring claims against Active Wealth at the FSCS have been found to be asking for up to a third of the redress payout in fees.
Investors can lodge claims with the compensation scheme free of charge.
But the ultimate bill for payouts for bad advice will fall on trading financial advisers, who pay for the FSCS via a levy.
Around 130,000 steelworkers had to choose to move their defined benefit (DB) pension pots to a new plan being created, BSPS II, or stay in the current fund, which would be moved to the Pension Protection Fund (PPF), by 22 December.
Of the total members, 43,000 were deferred, which meant transferring out their pension was also an option for them.
maria.espadinha@ft.com
