OpinionJul 10 2020

Your Shout: Letters to the editor

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Regarding your article ‘MPs step in over “troubling concerns” at FCA’ (Jun 26).

I do a fair bit of expert witness work and I totally agree with the issues raised.

I have repeatedly suggested to the Financial Conduct Authority that a far better way would be to set up a panel of experienced chartered financial planners and to send the fully redacted complaint to one of them who has the appropriate knowledge and experience to deal with it.

If they were paid for the time involved I think this would be a much speedier and fairer way. 

The FCA staff do not have the knowledge or experience required.

A process to review the reviewers could be easily organised. Decisions would have to be explained.

Furthermore, if the panel were given a direct line to the regulators and the professional bodies, I think this would be a very good way of identifying and disseminating bad practice and it would help self-policing.

There would be no shortage of volunteers for the panel. I think there is kudos to be had.

I also think good quality practitioners have had enough of bad practice and want to stamp it out. 

It reflects badly on all of us and it adds to our costs – to a level which is in danger of spiralling out of control.

Dave Robinson

Centurion Chartered Financial Planners

 

FCA acts too late

Regarding your article ‘High Court sides with FCA over pension introducers’ (June 30).

I have just read the above article and what concerns me is the fact that 2,000 people have lost £91.8m in pension money before the FCA took action. 

We now live in a high-tech, fast-moving world and it appears that the FCA is still using the quill pen.

The FCA’s approach appears to be that of a passive regulator waiting for someone to complain, which is always too late.  

What is required is a proactive regulator that is looking at what businesses and individuals are doing in the market and taking action to stop these types of frauds.

There are other government departments using technology to search the web for illegal activity, so surely this should not be beyond the ability of the FCA to do likewise and catch these fraudsters before they do this level of economic damage?

Nigel Reynolds

Reynolds and Co

 

Home working has cons too

Enough of the endless pontificating about how great it is working from home and how we should all do it permanently once the pandemic is over. 

Sure, it works for some. A friend who is a freelance graphic designer does most of his work from an old weaver’s cottage in a picturesque Pennine former mill town.  

But home working is not without its drawbacks.  

For many it means the loss of private space, [a lack of] equipment, and the sense of never being away from work and the temptation to always do ‘just one more thing’.  

Spare a thought especially for single parents. For many the office provides their main and sometimes only source of social interaction with other adults.  

However much anyone loves their kids, I’ve never met a parent who didn’t value some time away from them. 

I started West Riding in 2004 working from home. My typical day started around 6am and ended at midnight, seven days a week, working in an 11-by-eight-foot attic room.  

Into it I squeezed a desk and chair, four metal filing cabinets and a printer, while my wife/PA worked from our front room two floors below.  

With the two kids and two cats we had at the time it was anything but ideal, especially for the visiting Standard Life inspector who turned out to have a serious cat allergy. 

Our aim from the start was to move out to a proper office and 20 months later we did just that. We’ve never looked back and no way would we return to working permanently from home.

I accept that the pandemic has led many to find more enjoyable ways of working, but many more have realised how much they value the workplace experience and how much they miss it. 

Employers should think carefully before moving employees to home working and workers should do likewise before accepting any such move that may be forced upon them.

Neil Liversidge

West Riding Personal Finance Solutions

 

Govt must make amends

I was born in 1954 and was married in 1973. The ‘norm’ at that time was for mothers to stay home and raise children until they were of school age. 

When my children were older, I gained a degree and eventually became a headteacher in my late 50s, but I had to give up work to care for my parents, in-laws and my terminally ill husband. 

It is what women of the 1950s had to do: bringing up children and caring for elderly relatives. 

This was not expected of men born in the 1950s or since. I was the primary carer so that my husband could pursue his career uninterrupted.

Furthermore, at no time was I personally notified about the raising of my pension age.  

Compared with women only a few years older than me, I have lost six years’ pension. The professional pension I draw is not a full one as I ‘lost’ years raising our children and caring for elderly relatives, both of which saved the government an enormous amount of money.

It may ‘cost’ the government to make amends to the women whose pensions have been immorally denied them, but many of those women have actually saved the government money during their lives.

Kath Howe