Economic Financial Solutions IFA Ltd
Economic Financial Solutions IFA Ltd (FRN) 514849, trading under the name of Torch Wealth Management and JAG Protection, found itself in hot water after providing its clients with advice relating to investments and pensions which was not suitable.
In 2018 the FCA demanded that the company stopped performing any business related to regulated business like pensions or investments that were introduced through unregulated third parties, and asked that the relationships with them were terminated.
After the Financial Ombudsman Service upheld several complaints against Economic Financial Solutions, the company quickly appointed liquidators. It went into liquidation in November 2019 and was declared in default by the FSCS in January 2020. The company was dissolved on September 1, 2023.
Self-Invested Personal Pensions (SIPPs)
The company was responsible for arranging the transfer of pensions into SIPPs so that the services of a Discretionary Fund Manager (DFM) could be used for the investments.
The purpose of a DFM or stockbroker is to make decisions relating to investments for clients that are in line with their set of agreed objectives. What Economic Financial Solutions did not explain to their clients was that a fee would be charged on each and every transaction made, so the costs can rise very quickly.
Once a client’s appetite for risk was put as being high, investments were then put into an aggressive model portfolio provided by the DFM. The Financial Ombudsman Service took the view that there was more risk involved here than their clients were happy with.
Recommended Investments
One investment that was made available was SVS Securities managed portfolios. However, ITI Capital has now taken over this responsibility.
Other options were Corporate Finance Bonds, Angelfish PLC Bonds, Affinity Commercial LLP, or Affinity Bonds. Many of these corporate bonds had not been secured to assets of the company involved and so were incredibly risky.
Unsuitable Advice
Anyone that had dealings with any of these companies and transferred their pension, as a result, may have received advice that wasn’t suitable. If this happened to you then you should have your transaction reviewed.
The same is also true if were given statements that showed your pension was performing well when the truth was that the investments were illiquid, so you couldn’t access them.
