the times | Saturday April 30 2022 59Money
have to register with the Gateway
system to submit tax returns online.
HMRC said that Verify works only
with individuals rather than companies
or accountants, and it made the switch
early because it has the more advanced
Gateway authentication system.
There are 9 million Verify users over-
all, and 16 million users of Government
Gateway. To set up a Government
Gateway account you need two forms
of ID: a UK passport, a recent payslip or
P60, or a tax credit statement. You can
use a driving licence as ID only in
Northern Ireland, because the DVLA is
yet to grant permission for HMRC to
access driver records from England,
Wales and Scotland.
HMRC said: “Our withdrawal from
Verify was not unexpected. We under-
took various forms of communication
beforehand to help inform those who
use Verify for HMRC services of this.”
David ByersBetween April and June, after taking
on Post Office customers, complaints
about Shell Energy were 13 per 100,000
broadband customers, 17 per 100,000
between July and September, and then
15 in the last three months of last year.
Complaints have fallen at most other
broadband companies, despite the in-
crease in working from home since the450,000
Broadband customers moved to Shell
Energy from Post Office in March 2021The sickening day I lost £125k
Britain’s biggest advice
firm is investigating
claims that a 64-year-
old investor was misled,
reports Ali Hussain
W
hen Geraldine West-
brook discovered that
the £160,000 she had
put into a high-risk
investment scheme
was now worth just £35,000 her finan-
cial adviser gave her flowers and took
her out for a steak lunch at the Ivy.
That did not stop Westbrook from
feeling sick at the fact that a substantial
chunk of her retirement money had
been lost. She said: “I have been unable
to function properly for months. Even
now it makes me so depressed.”
Westbrook became suspicious about
her losses when she started asking how
she had ended up in a single high-risk
unregulated investment scheme that
ploughed her money into a solar farm
in Italy.
Westbrook’s adviser, Michael Baker,
is a partner at Regency Wealth Man-
agement, part of St James’s Place, Brit-
ain’s biggest financial advice business.
He told Westbrook that he was not at
fault and even helped her to write a
complaint to the investment firm
Octopus, which had set up the Enter-
prise Investment Scheme (EIS) in
which her money was locked away.
EIS’s are tax-efficient schemes
designed for sophisticated investors,
usually after they have run out of other
tax breaks such as pensions.
Westbrook, 64, said Baker told her to
include a line in the letter saying that
her complaint was not about the advice
she received, but rather about the
investment performance.
Octopus rejected the complaint.
Westbrook claims Baker also advised
her not to go to the Financial Ombuds-
man Service (FOS), which would have
investigated the entire sales process
and the suitability of the investment
plan.
Regency denies this and says that
Octopus had received similar com-
plaints about this type of investment,
but that they had been rejected. It says
that while Baker had helped her write a
complaint to Octopus it would have
been up to Westbrook to decide whe-ther to pursue a complaint with the
ombudsman.
At Christmas last year, Westbrook
decided to go through the suitability re-
port she had received outlining the rea-
sons for the advice, but she could not
find it. This official document, required
by regulation, contains the reasons for
the advice and recommendations made
by an adviser. The document must
signed by the client before any invest-
ment is made.
Westbrook asked Baker for a copy.
He emailed back on January 12, saying:
“As you may remember, this wasn’t a
product that I had available to me so I
introduced you to Jonathan Smith from
Gilruth independent advisors (now
Regentia) and he provided the advice
on this occasion.”Westbrook was shocked. She claims
to have never heard of Jonathan Smith
or Regentia. She later discovered that
Regentia is owned by Daniel Walton,
41, who also owns Regency Wealth
Management. The companies are
based at the same address in Wakefield.
“I can categorically say I have never
heard or met anyone called Jonathan
Smith and had never heard of Regentia
or Gilruth until that point,” Westbrook
said.
Regentia and Regency Wealth Man-
agement are both owned by Walton,
but only the latter is part of the SJP net-
work. SJP advisers own their business-
es and are known as partners. They are
only able to sell SJP products or third-
party investments approved by SJP.
Regency says that documents sent toShell worst for broadband service
S
hell Energy has won the title of
most-complained about broad-
band company in Britain. Fifteen
customers for every 100,000 com-
plained about Shell Energy in the final
three months of last year, according to
the regulator Ofcom.
The energy company, which took
over the Post Office’s 450,000 broad-
band customers in March last year, of-
fers broadband for between £17.99 and
£49.99 a month at speeds of up to 920
megabytes. Ofcom said the main com-
plaints about Shell were over faults and
service issues, how complaints were
handled and billing and charges.
TalkTalk was the subject of 14 com-
plaints for every 100,000 customers,
and Vodafone and Virgin Media both
had 13 per 100,000 customers. The in-
dustry average was nine.
Shell Energy was also named the
second most-complained about com-
pany for landline problems, with nine
complaints per 100,000 customers.
TalkTalk was the worst with ten, and
the industry average was six.start of the pandemic. Virgin Media had
33 complaints per 100,000 customers in
the first three months of last year but
that fell to 13 by December. Ofcom said
broadband complaints in general fell to
an all-time low between October and
December.
Martyn James from the complaints
website Resolver said: “These figures
don’t tell the full story. Complaint vol-
ume only shows which firm registered
the most complaints, but not which is
the best at dealing with them is. So a
firm that encourages people to get in
touch and makes it easy to do so can
conversely look like the worst on paper.
“That’s why we would like to see busi-
nesses compared based on how they
handle complaints and whether they
did a good job. Sadly, we are hearing
from thousands of people every month
who can’t even speak to a business,
never mind register a complaint.”
Shell said: “We are investing in new
ways to provide the best possible expe-
rience for every customer.”
George NixonWatch out for extra hassles
when you file your taxes
T
axpayers who used the Verify
scheme to confirm their identity
online have been left in the lurch
after the tax office ditched it early
because of security concerns.
The £200 million Verify system was
set up to allow users of all 22 gov.uk
website services to log in with the same
password. This included HM Revenue
& Customs and sites for your state pen-
sion, driving licence and other services.
Taxpayers had two options for
identity checks: Verify, which allows
you to confirm identity via the Post
Office or Experian using your driving
licence or credit records; and the
Government Gateway service, which
takes longer.
There were complaints about Verify
malfunctioning and being too exposed
to fraudsters. The government said last
year that it would ditch Verify by April
2023 but HMRC pulled the plug at the
start of this month. Taxpayers nowWestbrook made clear that Smith was
her adviser. They say that she had been
sent documents that allowed her to
raise any concerns with the advice that
she had received. She did not do so.
Westbrook had also been sent docu-
ments from Octopus that indicated
that her adviser was Jonathan Smith
and which asked her to check whether
the details were correct.
Westbrook first discovered that her
investment had failed in April last year.
Baker and a representative of Octopus
went to her home in Leeds to explain.
The next day Baker sent a large
bouquet and a card saying: “To Gerald-
ine, thank you for being my favourite
client”. He later invited her to the Ivy inLeeds and said she could order any-
thing she liked. They both had steak.
Westbrook is still mystified over the
link to the second adviser because she
keeps a meticulous diary and has no
record of meeting Smith. “I have never
had a financial adviser other than
Michael Baker and I have known him
since he worked as an adviser at Halifaxbefore he joined SJP in 2012. He took
me on as an SJP client and I trusted him
completely.”
When Westbrook was posted a copy
of a suitability report by Regentia, she
noticed the document said she was
married, when she had been a widow
for 11 years. The firm said this was a
typographical error.
Westbrook says a further error was
that she had no dependants when she
had two children at university, but the
firm says that just because she had
children at university does not mean
they were dependent.
The document lists an adviser fee of
£6,838, a “provider charge” of £4,103 to
Octopus and other annual charges to
the adviser and Octopus. Westbrook
claims she has no recollection of agree-
ing to these.
Records held by the City regulator,
the Financial Conduct Authority, show
that Jonathan Smith was registered as
an adviser for Regentia between No-
vember 2014 and August 2015. He
stopped being regulated in April 2016,
according to the FCA.
Octopus confirmed that Westbrook’s
investment was signed off by Smith. It
does not have Baker on its records.
In January, Westbrook wrote to Wal-
ton at Regentia to complain about
Michael Baker. She said: “I believed
everything Michael said and genuinely
believed he had my best interests at
heart. He knew I was lonely and vulner-
able, having raised two children on my
own after my husband died while they
were young in 2004. The investment
was totally inappropriate for me, given
my circumstances. I wanted to manage
my money so that I could fund my re-
tirement and support my two children.”
Westbrook has asked Walton to re-
fund her loss and all charges she paid to
SJP. She wants the company to ensure
she is never again contacted by Baker.
Walton said his firm has 8,000 clients
and a complaints rate of 0.01 per cent.
He said Regentia took the allegations
very seriously and had responded to
Westbrook after her initial complaint
following a full investigation. It said she
had been told she could take her com-
plaint to the Financial Ombudsman
Service.
St James’s Place said: “This is an exist-
ing complaint that we are already in the
process of looking into. It is only appro-
priate that we complete our review,
based on a full assessment of the facts,
before providing a final response.”The investment was
totally inappropriate for
me. I feel so depressed
Geraldine Westbrook felt that
her adviser, SJP, did not explain the
investment risks she was taking onb m c o n m f t t h fGeraldineWestbrookfelt that