FCA fines and bans five advisers for causing losses to 2,000 clients

'Real lessons to be learned'

Julia Bahr
clock • 4 min read

The FCA has banned five financial advice firm directors from working in financial services and fined them more than £1m, after they caused significant losses to pension customers in a "serious case of advisory misconduct".

Around £76.5 million of customers' pensions was switched into SIPPs with unsuitable underlying investments. This impacted more than 2,000 customers with an average pension pot of £38,000.  Mark Steward, executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, said many of the customers affected were ordinary people. "Some of those clients - one of them a road sweeper with an income of £13,000, who was relying on his pension pot for his retirement income - were very vulnerable. Their personal circumstances were not considered due to a clear absence of understanding of what the c...

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