At Keller Lenkner UK, our expert lawyers regularly support clients who have been impacted by investment scams and frauds; and we help them get their money back. However, sometimes, rather than deliberate unlawful conduct, straightforward negligence can result in pension mis-selling.
Regardless of whether a pension has been mis-sold due to criminal activity or a lack of care and attention, it’s vital that people know where to turn to get redress.
What is professional negligence?
We often turn to trusted professionals to help us make the right choices. Whether that’s an accountant, tax advisor, financial advisor, broker, or solicitor (amongst others), these professional advisors owe you a ‘duty of care’ when providing you with a service.
But what can you do if the professionals you rely on make a mistake or provide the wrong advice? Where things go wrong, it can be hugely upsetting. Careless professional advice can lead to serious financial and emotional problems, and if you have suffered as a result, you may be entitled to make a claim for compensation.
What does negligence look like?
Professional negligence and pension mis-selling can take many forms. Pension mis-selling can occur when people are targeted and talked into transferring their pensions into unregulated or failed investments. In other cases, people are advised to transfer perfectly good schemes into more expensive, complicated, and unsuitable products which they simply don’t require.
Some of the most common examples of pension-mis-selling due to professional negligence include:
- Where people are advised to transfer a safe final salary/defined benefit pension into a SIPP, QROPS or another personal pension when they would have been better off keeping their money in their workplace pension scheme.
- Where people are targeted by unregulated salespersons using hard-sell, pushy techniques, and are then referred to “tame” regulated financial advisers who facilitate an inappropriate transfer on behalf of the client.
- Where people have not been told about the risks, charges or fees, or the T&Cs of transferring a pension (or these were not fully explained)
- Where people have been advised to invest in pensions that are not suitable for them. Some pensions are more risk-averse than others, and a high-risk pension is not suitable for everyone. Professional advisors have a duty to match the product sold to the appetite for risk.
What are the consequences of pension mis-selling?
What do you need to know before making a professional negligence pension mis-selling claim?
To make a professional negligence claim, you first need to demonstrate that you were owed a duty of care, that the professional involved breached this duty, and that this breach caused you to suffer a loss. This can be hard to prove, and a professional is not expected to be right 100% of the time.
To win your case, you must show that another experienced professional in the same field would have given different advice or that the professional failed to follow recognised good practice. As such, it is important to appoint a solicitor with a history of handling these types of claims effectively.
What can you do if you have been mis-sold a pension due to professional negligence?
If you have received bad advice from an advisor who is not as qualified or knowledgeable as they said they were, you may be eligible for mis-sold pension compensation.
Representing people in England and Wales, at Keller Lenkner UK, we help our clients claim back what they are due following pension mis-selling. And, if you appoint us as your expert mis-selling lawyer, you’ll stand the best chance of success.
Making a claim with Keller Lenkner UK is straightforward. It is free to sign up, and we act on a strict no-win, no-fee basis, so, as our client, you will not pay us anything upfront.
If you believe that you have been mis-sold a pension, contact us to find out more about what making a claim involves. If you are not sure if you have a claim, we can find this out for you.
