About us

Frequently asked questions

• Is Simple Claims Assistance able to help me?
  If you opened a SIPP (Self Invested Personal Pension) in the last ten years and invested in one or more high-risk non-standard investments through your SIPP, Simple Claims Assistance may be able to help you.
• What is a non-standard (high-risk) investment?
  It is an investment that cannot easily or quickly be sold and turned into cash. It could include overseas hotel rooms, interests in farmland and forestry, self-storage units, shares and bonds in unquoted companies, plots in land-banking schemes and many others. In fact, it is any investment other than those, which can be readily bought and sold.
• Is there anything wrong with non-standard investments?
  Whatever you may have been told, almost all non-standard investments are high-risk. Unless you are quite wealthy, acquiring non-standard investments as a way of saving for your retirement is likely to be unwise. Additionally, many of the non-standard investments acquired through SIPPs have not performed as promised, often failing altogether.
• Why am I entitled to compensation?
  The FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) regulates both the SIPP operators and the Financial Advisers (FAs) that may have advised on SIPPs. If a Financial Adviser advised you, then they may have broken FCA rules. Therefore, the SIPP operators may also have broken FCA rules. In the year 2000 Parliament created special bodies through which victims of bad practice by Financial Advisers and SIPP operators can obtain compensation.
• What could my Financial Adviser have done wrong?
  It is likely that they advised on opening your SIPP and on your moving existing pensions into it, without properly assessing whether a SIPP was suitable for you. Equally without conducting correct assessment of the non-standard investments introduced into your SIPP.
• What could my SIPP operator have done wrong?
  The SIPP operator may have accepted your or your adviser’s instructions to purchase non-standard investments, knowing that you were receiving bad advice, or the advice was given unlawfully. The SIPP operator may not have conducted adequate due diligence on the investments. Not exercising sufficient duty of care.
• Was criminality involved?
  Some providers of non-standard investments may have acted criminally; and it is possible that some Financial Advisers also did so. Simple Claims Assistance will report any suspicion of criminality to the appropriate authority. But Simple Claims Assistance’s primary focus is on the civil claims you have against regulated entities, especially Financial Advisers and SIPP operators.