Please see attached a copy of the briefing to be held on Tuesday 21st April 2009 entitled Property Investment for Self Invested Pension Schemes to be held at the Mayfair Conference Centre London. Please note that AMPS members are entitled to a 20% discount.

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The FSA have published their business plan for 2009/10.

 

Against a backdrop of public and governmental scrutiny, recriminations and admissions that the FSA took their eye off the regulatory ball, in particular regulatory policies and supervision on capital adequacy, not surprisingly, the FSA will focus on prudential and conduct risks, in particular the role of senior management in firms. More than ever, Senior Management Systems & Controls will be scrutinised to ensure all senior management are conversant and engaged with risk management.

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I raised this problem at the request of a client (also an AMPS Member) at the last HMRC PSS Customer Forum at the end of November 2008. As is their wont, HMRC asked me to come back with more figures - I had already given them some - to illustrate the scale of the problem. As with other Govt Depts, it seems they will only treat a problem seriously once they become convinced a lot of people are affected.

Have any other AMPS Members experienced problems with transfers of pre-A Day property SIPPs? If you have, please can you estimate what percentage of your potential or actual clients have been affected?

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Has anyone got any experience with dealing with transfers in from QROPS to SIPPs?  We are hoping to transfer in a QROPS status pension from a registered pension scheme in Jersey. 

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The FSA has published its review of pension switching based on 30 firms and 500 transfers to personal pensions/SIPPs conducted since A-Day; this represented approximately 10% of transfer cases. Concerns were raised on the suitability of advice from advisers; comments were also made on Provider's actions.

Dealing first with advice issues, the FSA found unsuitable advice in 16% of the cases reviewed. Of course, one can conclude that 84% must have been acceptable, however the advice deficiencies included extra product charges not being justified or explained properly, loss of benefits from the ceding scheme, client attitude to risk not being matched to investments and the need for ongoing reviews not being covered - all basic stuff.

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A reminder to FSA authorised members that the FSA's TCF December deadline is fast approaching. The FSA set a December deadline for firms to demonstrate they are consistently treating customers fairly. For FSA authorised firms, this means:

• demonstrating that senior management have instilled a culture within the firm whereby they understand and can articulate what the fair treatment of customers means;
• ensuring this culture permeates all staff within the company and those staff know what their TCF responsibilities are;
• where errors are found they are put right and learned from;
• appropriately and accurately measuring performance against all customer fairness issues materially relevant to the firm's business and acting on the results;
• demonstrating that these measures are delivering fair outcomes; and
• have no serious failings, including areas of particular regulatory interest (of which we know SIPPs are).

The above points are extracted (and paraphrased in some cases) from various useful FSA documents that can be found on the website within the Treating Customers Fairly section. There is also some useful TCF information within the Small Firms section of the FSA website - this section has recently been redesigned and is a significant improvement on the previous layout.

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AMPS committee changes

At the AGM on the 8th October, three exiting committee members, Robert Graves (Rowanmoor Pensions), Mike Morrison (Winterthur Life) and David Philips (D A Philips & Co) were up for re-election to the committee having served one three year term. David Downie (Rowanmoor Pensions), the AMPS treasurer was however stepping down after a number of years involvement on the committee.

As well as the three committee members standing for re-election, three new candidates put themselves forward for election to the committee, namely Daniel Hawkins (Friends Provident), Ian Shaw (Montpelier Pensions Administration Services), and Michael Smith (Pointon York).

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This is the application required to enjoy the benefits the Association is able to offer including access to Newsletters.

The website will also allow comments and forum participation as well as the addition of members names and firms on the "Find A Member" page.

The fee for annual membership is currently £200 and cheques payable to AMPS will be required to be sent to the following address with your application to allow the Commitee to consider your request.

Please send your cheque and application for the attention of: -

Geoff Buck

Killik and Co

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