Plug pulled on pension cold-caller that attracted £4.8m

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Plug pulled on pension cold-caller that attracted £4.8m

A pension company has been ordered into liquidation by the High Court after it was found to have taken £4.8m from investors to invest in storage products.

Chartwell Trustee Pension Solutions, the sole trustee of the Pinnacle Pension Scheme, was taken to court after the Insolvency Service received complaints about it and launched an investigation.

The investigation found the company had run a cold-calling telesales operation to attract capital from pension savers.

Members were told they could expect a guaranteed 8 per cent return into their pension for the first two years and further returns may follow from investing in storage products.

But the Insolvency Service could not ascertain whether all the funds had indeed been invested in storage units because the company’s records were incomplete.

It said customers experienced enormous difficulties in contacting the company, received little information from the company and did not appear to have been issued with any annual returns, which would provide them with details of their invested funds, since October 2015.

It said investigators were unable to obtain any clear view of how the company operated and records the company did provide were incomplete, inconsistent and contradicted information the company had provided to The Pensions Regulator.

Irshard Mohammed, investigation supervisor of the Insolvency Service, said: “Those behind companies such as Chartwell should be aware that the Insolvency Service will not tolerate such abuses of the corporate regime. It is telling that this situation appears to have arisen from telephone cold-calling.

“Members of the public should be most wary when approached with investment proposals or proposals of how to manage their pension, through unsolicited telephone calls.”

Chartwell was incorporated on 14 December 2007 and was wound up by the court on 6 June 2018.

Judge Prentis found the company operated with a lack of commercial probity, a lack of transparency, and without any presence at its registered office address. 

The news comes after the government delayed its planned ban of cold-calling.

It announced last week (12 July) that the ban on pension cold calling will not happen anytime soon, and that it is launching a consultation on the matter instead.

The economic secretary to the Treasury and minister for the City, John Glen, told parliament due to the “complexity” of the issue, the government had failed to meet the deadline.

carmen.reichman@ft.com