Quite an extraordinary tale – Omar Hussein, former director and senior financial adviser at pension switching firm Consumer Wealth Ltd, has been prohibited from working in financial services and fined £116,000, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has disclosed.
The main statement from the FCA is quite grim.
“Between 2015 and 2017, Mr Hussein and his firm advised 620 customers to switch their pension into a self-invested personal pension (SIPP) containing significant investments in ‘Portfolio 6’ (P6), an investment offered by the Discretionary Fund Management firm, Greyfriars Asset Management LLP (Greyfriars). His misconduct put at risk an estimated £13.5m of CWL customers’ retirement savings.
“P6 was a high-risk investment comprised of unregulated mini-bonds relating to overseas investments in car parks, renewable energy and holiday resorts. These investments were illiquid in nature and highly likely to be unsuitable for the low net worth, financially inexperienced investors who were the firm’s target market. Several of the underlying mini bond investments in P6 subsequently failed and P6 was closed to new investment in 2016. Greyfriars went into in administration in 2018."
Difficult to think of a worse run of events.
Another strange story but an interesting scoop. Not entirely sure this is exactly cricket either though not of the same order.
Deloitte is set to force its 20,000 UK staff to use advisers and wealth managers from an approved panel for their personal investments, New Model Adviser reports.
Deloitte brought in a new policy last month that will mean its staff have to select one of the advisers, wealth managers and/or platforms from its panel if they wish to invest new money into a personal pension, ISA or general investment account.
The chairman of the FCA Charles Randell is to step down a year early. There is a lot of official blurb about why. Some speculation outside of this suggests that there have been some rows about the influence of the Treasury and the extent of the shake up in the organisation.
The Chartered Insurance Institute has admitted to "not [being] where we want to be" on financial strength and pledged to restore its finances, following questions raised by members.
