Police probe British Steel pensioners’ allegations
POLICE are investigating claims that Port Talbot steelworkers were given poor advice about their pensions.
Some employees at the site allege they were badly advised to move their pension pots from the British Steel Pension Scheme after it was removed from Tata Steel last September.
Around 130,000 employees and pensioners were given a choice on the future of their pensions.
Options included staying with the current scheme, which will eventually fall into the Pension Protection Fund, moving pension pots to the newly-created British Steel Pension Scheme, or transferring earnings to a personal scheme.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) announced just before Christmas that it was investigating 17 companies over the handling of their pensions advice to steelworkers.
It comes after a third of British Steel Pension Scheme members were revealed to have been given bad advice during the process.
The FCA said it had reviewed 129 case files of pensioners who had sought advice from firms of financial advisers on transferring their pensions and found in 33% of the cases the advice given was unsuitable to their circumstances.
Around 109 financial advice firms have been contacted in the watchdog’s investigation, they said, and 21 of these had been asked to provide case files to assess the suitability of the advice they had given.
The watchdog added that in 51% of cases it had reviewed, the advice given to British Steel pensioners had been suitable to their circumstances. In 16% of cases it was unclear whether the advice was suitable or not. Its work so far has encompassed 1,766 out of 2,054 BSPS transfer cases.
So far eight financial advice firms have accepted voluntary restrictions on their permission to provide pensions advice following intervention by the FCA.
They include Active Wealth, which has been estimated to have handled more than £40m worth of BSPS pension transfers involving around 100 fund members, averaging nearly £400,000 each.
A South Wales Police spokesman said the force was “reviewing certain information that has been brought to our attention”.