I have received an unsolicited email on Linked in
I hope you are well.
We have a limited opportunity for your client’s to invest in a UK Eco Park Corporate Bond for a 15 month period with a guaranteed interest payment of 10.96% at the end of the term.
The Eco Park in Anglesey will be a unique combined food and power business where several core businesses will form a profitable, environmentally friendly and industrial agricultural facility with a large renewable energy power plant at its core.
A minimum investment of £10,000 is required to participate. Investors receive an interest payment equal to 10.96%, paid in one instalment after 15 months. Fully SIPP/ SSAS approved.
We are currently taking new subscriptions for this investment that has a maximum raise of £4M, we expect it to be fully subscribed within a month or so.
Attractive marketing fees available for interested advisers.
If you have clients that may be interested or you would simply like to receive more information regarding this or any of the other investments we offer, please feel free to contact me on the details below.
I hope to hear from you soon.
Needless to say, this person will not be hearing from me but he might be hearing from the FCA.
The FCA are keen to stamp on the abuse of social media through one to many approaches like this. The firm involved trade through a website http://www.intellectfinancial.co.uk which markets not just this dubious “investment” but many other collective schemes which all offer attractive returns with terminal payments if you wait three years. There is a disclaimer on the website that warns that these investments are not recognised by the FCA but the offers are made to the “discerning” investor who presumably has the “intellect” to see beyond the protections put in place by the FCA.
I am not a regulated adviser so I can only read this offer as meant for me. I would like to make 10.96% over the next 15 months on my money but I worry about the risk. If I were to put this investment in my SIPP – what would that “fully approved” claim mean. Would I be able to sue the SIPP provider if the investment failed as happened recently, or are there SIPP providers who don’t worry too much about me losing all my money and are happy to step in as my guarantor?
What goes on in my linked in inbox is presumably out of site of the Regulator. There need be no checks as to financial promotions – this mail has been targeted to me as a regulated person – what is the risk to Intellect Financial?
The risk is ridiculously obvious, sooner or later- one of these mails is going to fall into the inbox of a financial journalist or a blogger who is going to forward it the Regulator (as I have done) and the firm will be investigated (as my friend Phil Bray tells me happens).
Linked In is not a wild-west saloon where any gun-slinger can tout his or her wares. It is a self-regulating space where the likes of Intellect Finance should learn rather than earn.
I am experienced enough to see a wolf in sheep’s clothing but who else got this round robin? Who is phoning for a prospectus , flattered to be considered a discerning client, and what advisers, attracted by “attractive marketing fees” is teeing up his investors for an investment with an “interest payment” of 10.95%” after 15 months?
