The Financial Conduct Authority has taken action against three further firms who have made misleading compensation offers to British Steel Pension Scheme (BSPS) members.
According to the FCA, the three firms - Harvest Associates, QED Financial Associates and Alpha Financial Services - were associated with the British Steel Adviser Group and made unsolicited offers to their BSPS clients who had not yet complained.
Alpha Financial Services made offers of £100 to 100 per cent of its clients, while QED Financial Associates offered 93 per cent of its clients £300 each.
Similarly, Harvest Associates offered 91 per cent of its clients offers of either £50 or £200.
The FCA has said it is “seriously concerned” that these unsolicited settlement offers were not calculated in line with its guidance and were a “deliberate attempt to exclude former BSPS members from the redress scheme”.
Each of the three firms will now be required to ensure that consumers who accepted these unsolicited offers are treated in the same way as customers who did not, the FCA has said.
This will ensure they receive the appropriate redress they are entitled to, putting them back in the financial position they would have been in at retirement had they stayed in the BSPS.
To date, the FCA has cracked down on a number of firms offering unsolicited redress offers to BSPS members.
Last month, the regulator wrote to firms to inform them of concerns about third party actuarial providers used for redress calculations in advance of the British Steel pension redress scheme.
“Our concerns are heightened where there has been no actuarial oversight of the inputs into using third party actuarial provider portals,” it said.
“This appears to have been a contributing factor to the misleading redress offers made by financial advisory firms to former BSPS members before the scheme started.”
Towards the end of May the FCA also acted against a firm which it said avoided its liabilities under the British Steel redress scheme.
The firm, David Stock & Co Limited made unsolicited offers of £50 to 48 per cent of its clients who had been BSPS members and had not yet complained.
Back in February, the regulator also formally notified Abbey Lane Financial Associates Limited and Estate Capital Financial Management Limited to stop making unsolicited offers.
The FCA said Abbey Lane made offers of £100 to 82 per cent of its clients who were BSPS members and Estate Capital made offers of £300 to 83 per cent of its former BSPS members.
It is estimated that as part of the redress scheme, which was announced last March, some 1,400 steelworkers will receive £71.2mn in redress.
The regulator expects that most redress will then be paid by the end of March 2024.
All advice must be reviewed by September 28 this year.
jane.matthews@ft.com
