Self-invested personal pension (SIPP) providers have endorsed the regulator's call to review due diligence practices as increasingly sophisticated scammers obscure 'non-standard investments' through the services of discretionary fund managers (DFMs).
In an alert, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said scams had evolved from a "first generation" that offered unregulated assets for direct investment and a "second generation" that obscured these assets by packing them in special purpose vehicles (SPV) bonds. A newer "third generation" of SIPP scams obscure investments further still, it warned, by using the services of DFMs to create portfolios that invest in SPV bonds. ‘Alarm bells' InvestAcc sales and marketing director Nigel Bennett called the regulator's warning "unsurprising", noting a wave of enquiries to appoint DFMs in r...
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