Pension scandal losses could reach as high as £1bn! Have you checked your own pension?

A deeper look at your SIPP might set you at ease, or give you more questions than answers…

• PASA chairman says £1bn from pensions could have been lost to scammers
• Tip of the pension mis-selling scandal iceberg
• Example of a mis-sold pension

According to the chair of the Pensions Administration Standards Association, Margaret Snowdon, people may have lost as much as £1bn to pension scams and dodgy transfers!

As part of her conference address, the PASA chair said that “official statistics can really be under-reported”, and that her own estimate could be arrived at by speaking to “insurers, administrators and trustees” who are able to highlight suspicious transfers that may not have yet been counted.

Officially, the government estimates a figure of £43m scammed since April 2014, at an average of £15,000 per person.

No surprises to pension CMCs

From our own perspective as a leading CMC in the fight against pension mis-selling, the perhaps frightening £1bn figure could well be accurate, as more and more mis-sold pensions are revealed to us daily, usually where people have been unsuitably advised to transfer into a SIPP in order to invest in High-risk investments.

3 of the investments we are currently trying to recover money for have relations to investigations by the Serious Fraud Office, too.

“I honestly feel that we haven’t even scratched the surface”, Ms Snowden added.

£23m in compensation claims

It’s a sad fact, but as it stands, not everybody who has lost their pension to a cold-call scammer is able to win their money back, but if Spencer Churchill Claims Advice alone can recover £Millions from mis-sold high-risk investments in SIPPs, then there’s likely a lot more out there yet to be discovered, even by the holders!

After all, how often do you review your pension or even check your statement?

Warning signs

Despite efforts by the regulator, there are still many ways a pension transfer could turn sour if the wrong people are involved, and the wrong advice given.

The most common one we see here is where somebody transfers their pension into a SIPP after a cold-call, after being told they could make more money in alternative investments such as property overseas, forestry schemes and more.