Our Chair @frankfieldteam is demanding an explanation of Celtic Wealth & Active Wealth’s roles in BSPS transfers https://t.co/1F7Db7OAT5 Watch an expert witness who was happy to give evidence last week explain the golden rule for gold-plated final salary pension transfer advice pic.twitter.com/Daq13bhmoT
— Work & Pensions Ctte (@CommonsWorkPen) December 19, 2017
Thanks to the Work & Pensions Committee for giving me a soapbox. Video doesn’t lie and this is what I said, and how I said it. I’m particularly pleased that I was able to share one of the best things I learned at this summers Great Pension Transfer Debate where Al Cunningham spoke.
Some people have called this scaremongering and no doubt Al Rush and I will continue to get criticism from those who support a different way of doing things. However, I put it to you, that if we are to make sense of the FCA’s findings that more than 50% of the advice to transfer is wrong, there must be something that defines what wrong is.
What is wrong with transferring?
There is nothing wrong with transferring if you are know what you are doing. I question whether the comments in this blog, demonstrate that the people transferring know what they are doing, though they might do. Simply kicking out against the sponsor of your pension scheme is not a good reason to transfer and people who give this as their chief reason to take a CETV look extremely vulnerable to being ripped off.
I’d turn things round. To have a good reason to transfer, you must be able to articulate to yourself and to your adviser (assuming you’ve got more than £30k as a CETV) that transferring is in your best interest. The adviser has got to push back if he or she disagrees.
A financial adviser is paid to advise, and as Al Cunningham, Al Rush and all good advisers do, financial advisers have got to be good at saying “no”, even when “yes” makes them more money.
What is wrong with transferring is that defined benefit pension schemes are the best way for most people to get a wage in retirement. It is the exceptions that prove that rule- and there are exceptions.
What is wrong with the world?
A much bigger issue relates to why we cannot be definitive with people and tell them they are wrong. One large pension scheme I deal with knew that a huge amount of CETVs were being taken by one adviser. That adviser turned out to be one of the six that have stopped giving BSPS CETV advice because of the FCA’s current interventions.
But the trustees of this scheme had not shared their intelligence with the FCA and so nothing had been done.
Ezra Pound ends my favourite poem of his
Here error is all in the not done,
all in the diffidence that faltered . . . (Canto LXXXI)
