Two Million Financial Complaints in 6 Months

Two Million Financial Complaints in 6 Months.

The finance industry regulator, the financial conduct authority (FCA) has released figures showing that financial services firms received 2,183,540 new complaints in the second half of 2014.

The above figures include complaints for PPI miss selling which amounted to more than half of all complaints at 1,124,622.

Overall financial services complaints are down by 7% but complaints for PPI increased by 1% and complaints for banking and credit card products increased by 8%. The amount of complaints relating to financial advice fell yet again with less than 1% of all complaints being financial adviser related.

As you would expect, the big banking groups in the UK had the most complaints and most of the banking groups having complaints in excess of 150,000 to 200,000+.

Is pension flexibility the next mis-selling scandal?

We suggest there is a real risk to consumers of not fully understanding the new pension flexibility rules with some vulnerable consumers being 'conned’ or indeed people not understanding or not having explained to them cash flow modelling and the risks of your pension fund run out if you continue to draw income down from the fund when investment performance is poor.

If you are thinking of the new flexible pensions rules, you must take advice and indeed many pension companies already suggesting that they will not allow clients to convert their existing pension schemes to new style flexible drawdown schemes without advice.

No pension company wants the liability or the 'bad press' of a pensioner running out of money because they did not understand the risks involved with flexible pension drawdown. 

When we give flexible pension drawdown advice we will always issue various cash flow models assuming different levels of withdrawal and different investment returns to enable you to understand the likelihood of you exhausting your pension fund in difficult economic times.