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investments tanked. Surely, I
thought, as I lay awake in
mental agony in my North
London flat, no one could just
take my shares away from me?
The next morning, I rushed to
the phone to ring the helpline
— or the notmuchhelpline, as it
should be called.
I asked the lady on the phone
whether my shares were safe.
She said she was unable to say
— and that I would have to
wait until the next letter from
Leonard Curtis.
My heart started pounding all
over again. After more frantic
research, I discovered that the
FCA had stopped all SVS’s
regulated activity and frozen
their clients’ money and assets
on August 2.
They did this, ‘acting on
intelligence’ about where SVS
was investing its clients’ money
— so, in other words, their
investment management
side had messed up, but that
still jeopardised the share-
dealing operation I’d been
dealing with.
The FCA has conducted
urgent supervisory work and
‘identified serious concerns
about the way in which the
business was operating’.
One website, financialclaims.
com, alleges about SVS that
‘around 90 pc of the assets under
management were invested in
high-risk funds with no attempt
to ensure suitability.
‘The business was unable to
demonstrate basic due diligence
on its investments’.
The website went on to say
that the FCA has been worried
about SVS’s high-risk invest-
ments since 2017, several of
which were closely linked to
senior figures at the firm.
In the course of two days, I
furiously researched what
happens to your money when
an investment company goes
into special administration.
The crucial thing is that your
investment company should be
registered with the Financial
Services Compensation Scheme
(FSCS). This allows ‘eligible
clients’ to get compensation of
up to £85,000.
Whew! My liability has fallento £26,000 as long as I’m an
eligible client. I’m pretty sure I
am — but that isn’t confirmed
in my heart-attack letter or by
the notmuchhelpline.
I got in touch with two
investment specialist friends.
They’re both financial planet
brains but, in the vacuum of
information supplied to me,
they only provided highly well-
informed speculation.
What is now likely to happen
is that all the remaining money
(including any share dividends)
held by SVS will be distributed
between the clients on a pro
rata basis. Any shortfall up to
£85,000 will be covered by the
compensation law.
Any remaining shortfall — and
I’m out of pocket.
There’s also a big question as
to whether I, and the other SVS
clients, should have to pay for
the administration costs of
this nightmare.
Administrators are entitled to
take their costs from clients’
funds. But, when another
investment company, Beaufort
Securities, collapsed last year,
the FSCS ended up paying the
administrator, Pricewaterhouse-
Coopers, without the clients
taking the hit. There’s no
guarantee that will happen in
my case.
So what now? All I can do is
sit and wait. The original lettersays the administrators will be
in touch with their proposals by
September 27. Another month
of acute anxiety and sleepless
nights then.
Another month when I could
be attacked by money-sucking
jackals, too.
All the advice I was given
shared the same point: be wary
of anyone telephoning you
offering to help you retrieve
your money. Claims manage-
ment companies are often
scams. Ignore them.
I realise that I’m one of the
lucky ones. I’m 47, in good health
with a good job, with access to
investment professionals who
can give me measured advice.
Imagine if I were 40 years
older, relying on that frozen
money for my retirement with
no one to advise me — apart
from the notmuchhelpline.
Heavily bruised by this sum-
mertime misery, I can now give
readers some crucial advice.
Make sure your investment
firm is covered by the FSCS.
Don’t invest more than £85,000
in any one company. And
beware what horrors await you
in the post.
Leonard Curtis declined
to comment.
n HARRY MOUNT is editor of
The Oldie magazine.
[email protected]FROM PREVIOUS PAGEF
AMILIES have just over 24
hours left to make a compen-
sation claim for mis-sold PPI
before they lose their chance
for good.
The final deadline for making a complaint
about payment protection insurance (PPI)
is midnight tomorrow (August 29).
Complaints lodged with banks and
building societies after this date will not
be accepted.
Despite this, one third of people yet to
complain plan to wait until deadline day on
Thursday to decide whether to make a
claim, according to a survey carried out by
the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
A further quarter said they would leave it
until the final few hours.
As the Mail reported last week, all but one
of the six High Street banking giants have
pledged to keep their phone lines open until
midnight to coincide with the PPI deadline
— with some pulling in extra staff to cope
with soaring numbers of phone calls.
Lloyds Banking Group reported that its
call levels have now reached around 190,000
a week, up from 150,000 a week in the three
months to June.
Britain’s biggest building society, Nation-
wide, said it has seen a 66 pc rise in the
number of PPI calls in August compared to
mid-June. The mutual has tripled the
number of staff in its complaints team in
preparation for a last-minute dash.
Over the past nine weeks the FCA says it
has seen the number of people using its
complaints website jump by 449 pc. It has
also recorded a 689 pc increase in calls from
people requesting more information about
how to make a complaint.
In June, £340.4 million was paid out to
households who complained about the
way they were sold PPI. This takes the total
amount of compensation paid out since
January 2011 to £36 billion, according to the
City watchdog.
The mis-selling scandal dates back to the
1990s. The insurance policy was designed tocover customers’ mortgages, loans and
credit card payments if they were unable to
pay through sickness or unemployment.
But many did not want or need the
insurance. Others did not even realise they
had been sold the policy, with the extra
payments just added to their bill without
their knowledge.
When the backlog of complaints has been
cleared it is forecast that the scandal will
have cost the banking industry £44 billion incompensation. Adam French, consumer
rights expert at Which?, says: ‘If you had
any kind of credit product, such as a
consumer loan, store card, credit card or
mortgage up until 2006, when the regulator
began imposing fines for PPI mis-selling,
you could have been mis-sold PPI.
‘With the PPI deadline just hours away
this is the final chance for anyone who
thinks they may have been mis-sold to
make a claim.’
Banks have eight weeks to respond to
your complaint. If your complaint is refused
you will still have six months to refer your
case to the Financial Ombudsman Service.
There are a host of free template complaint
letters available online. Visit thisismoney.
co.uk/reclaim-PPI.
Always submit a claim directly to your
bank as claims management companies
can take as much as 20 pc of any payout
plus VAT.
Visit the Fca.org.uk/ppi or call its helpline
on 0800 101 8800 for more information.
[email protected]PPI: THE FINAL
COUNTDOWN
(^) Daily Mail, Wednesday, August 28, 2019
By Samantha
Partington
HOW TO PROTECT
YOUR SAVINGS
- MAKE sure the company
you’re investing with, and
the broker you are using,
are on the Financial Conduct
Authority register and will
pay out under the Financial
Services Compensation
Scheme. Search for them by
visiting register.fca.org.uk. - BE WARY about invest-
ing more than £85,000 in
one firm — as this is the
maximum payout you will
receive, per firm, from
the Financial Services
Compensation Scheme if
the business fails.- MAKE sure you know
what you are investing in.
If you don’t recognise the
names of the companies
listed in your portfolio, this
is usually a bad sign. - IF YOU use an investment
service, make sure your
money is ring-fenced in a
nominee account. - IF YOU’RE unsure, speak
to a financial adviser.
£36bn paid out in
8 years ... now just
hours left to claim