Common mis-sold pension investments

Understanding high-risk investment claims

The investments listed above all have three things in common:

1. They were all high-risk investments
2. They were all commonly mis-sold to people with a SIPP, SSAS and/or QROPS pension
3. They are unregulated by the FCA

This meant that many of them were based abroad or floated on foreign stock exchanges, making them more open to volatility, fraud and collapse. In addition, as these investments are not regulated by the FCA, they do not come with the protection of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).

If things go south with any of these investments (which has often been the case), investors face the grim possibility of losing all their invested funds.

Are you worried you’ve mis-sold a high-risk investment? We’re here to help. Give our team a call today to see if you can make a claim.

UCIS, non-standard and illiquid Assets

We understand that, when it comes to mis-sold pension investments, you can be overwhelmed with jargon and confusing phrases. UCIS, non-standard and illiquid assets are some of the most common – but what do they mean?

UCIS – Unregulated Collective Investment Scheme

These are a type of high risk, non-standard investment unregulated by the FCA.

Non-standard investment

These investments may be unregulated, prone to price changes and have little tangibility.

Illiquid assets

An asset is an investment you own; if it is ‘liquid’, it means there is a vibrant market for it, where shares in the investment can be bought and sold easily.

‘Illiquid’ is the opposite. Investing in an asset that is prone to illiquidity could mean your money drops in value or gets trapped in the investment for a long time.

Suitability of investments

Selling high-risk investments has a strict rule book.

The FCA says that financial advisers have to make sure investments are a good fit for the person buying them. They need to think about how much risk is suitable for each individual before giving advice or making a sale.

Think about it this way: some people have plenty of money and can handle the risk (these people are often called ‘high net worth individuals’). Or they could have previous experience in making riskier investments (‘sophisticated investors’).

On the flip side of this, other people don’t have the spare cash and can’t afford to take these chances, or they may not have the knowledge to fully understand what they are investing in.

If financial advisers recommend high-risk investments to people with low-risk profiles, they may be mis-selling those investments.

Do you think this happened to you? Contact our team today, and together we’ll figure out if you have a valid claim.