A substantial number of current and former employees who hold their pensions with the Tayside Pension Fund have been mis-advised into transferring away their highly valuable final salary pensions. These precious inflation-proofed pensions come with huge benefits and guarantees that are lost immediately if moved. Losses can run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Participating employers within the Tayside Pension Fund include:
Angus Council
Dundee City Council
Dundee & Angus College
Perth & Kinross Council
Perth College UHI
Police Scotland (non-uniformed staff)
Scottish Fire & Rescue Service (non-uniformed staff)
Tayside Contracts
And a range of other organisations that have applied to be part of the Fund.
A total of 41 employers allow their employees to join the Tayside Pension Fund.
Leading Scottish financial claims management experts, Beat the Banks, continue to uncover multiple cases of inappropriate advice that have led to both current and former employees suffering considerable financial losses.
Mike Begg, Managing Director at Beat the Banks, said: “It’s a financial scandal right here on our doorstep and it’s being completely ignored.” He added: “Unfortunately, we continue to see unsuspecting members of former workplace final salary pensions lose huge amounts of money due to reckless and greedy financial advisers and simply shocking pension transfer advice.”
Beat the Banks have identified three main culprits:
- Purely Financial Limited (previously known as Purely Pensions Limited). Based in York, and possibliy introduced as the Arlo Group UK Limited. Ongoing advice for your pension may have since been transferred to AAF Financial Ltd.
- Harbour Rock Capital Limited (previously known as Portafina Investment Management Limited) and based in Rochester, Kent.
- Capital & Income Solutions. Based in Leeds, they used Mike Connelly, a previous director of The Mortgage Finance Store, to provide pension transfer advice, despite him not being authorised or regulated. Clients Beat the Banks have represented have suffered calculated losses of more than £3.5 million.
Members of the Tayside Pension Fund who have taken pension transfer advice from any of these firms should urgently review the advice they were given. Even if pension holders insisted on transferring and were happy with the advice they received at the time, it still makes no difference if the regulatory rules and guidance were not correctly followed by these companies.
