The Financial Conduct Authority has banned Keith Dickinson and Andrew Allen for British Steel Pension Scheme (BSPS) advice failings.
They have also been ordered to pay £155,000 in compensation.
Keith Dickinson and Andrew Allen worked at Mansion Park Limited (now in liquidation) advising customers on pension transfers.
The FCA found that between June 2015 and December 2017, Dickinson provided pension transfer advice, which Allen signed off, that was unsuitable.
Together Dickinson and Allen will pay £70,000 and £85,606, respectively, to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).
This will contribute towards the compensation owed to Mansion Park’s customers.
The FSCS has so far paid out almost £3m in compensation to Mansion Park customers for the unsuitable advice they received, including over £2m for advice provided by Dickinson.
Up to 400 Mansion Park customers were advised to transfer out of their defined benefit plans.
Dickinson advised on 135 of them, including 68 members of the BSPS.
In total, those advised by Dickinson had pension benefits worth approximately £36.8m.
Allen demonstrated a lack of competence in his oversight of advice for 328 (82%) of those 400 Mansion Park customers, including 72 who were BSPS members.
Customers transferring out of the BSPS were in a vulnerable position due to the uncertainty surrounding the future of their pension scheme.
It was critical they received sound advice from Mansion Park.
According to the FCA, in most of the advice Dickinson provided and the files Allen signed off, the advice was unsuitable.
This was because it was based on the flawed assumption that transferring would be in their customer’s best interest.
The advice provided did not assess whether customers were relying on income from their defined benefit pension scheme in retirement.
Or whether the customer understood the risks of transferring out or whether they could bear those financial risks.
Therese Chambers, joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight said: “People turned to Mansion Park to give them vital advice so they’d have financial peace of mind in retirement.
“Both Dickinson and Allen failed to do their job. They put people’s hard earned retirement money at risk and so it is only right that they contribute to the costs of compensating these people.
“We will continue to take action where failings by advisers put their customers at risk.”
Any customers who were advised to transfer by Mansion Park should contact the FSCS to see if they are owed compensation.
The FSCS has already paid out £3m, against which fines totalling £155,606 are hardly going to make much difference.
People look to the FCA to protect them from the consequences of bad advice from the likes of Mansion Park so they may have confidence in the advice they’ve received and financial peace of mind in retirement. On both counts, the FCA has failed dismally to do its job. As usual.
https://www.fscs.org.uk/making-a-claim/failed-firms/
63 this year alone.