Basic Search  |  Summaries  |  Advanced SearchPenalty: £62,996
Year: 2020
Date: 28 September, 2020
Offence Group: financial offences
Offence Type: investor protection violation
Violation Description: IFSL, as a standard practice for UK Defined Benefit Scheme transfers, disaggregated the advisory process (treating the pension transfer process as ‘execution only'). Although the clients were provided with UK FCA authorised advice regarding the transfer, this was a false partition of the true nature of the transaction. These practices were contrary to regulatory requirements and failed to ensure the suitability of the overall advice provided to its clients; IFSL misused its own group pension scheme (regular contributions only), with such activity being contrary to the terms agreed with the product provider, and without ensuring that its clients were fully informed of the product into which they were exposed; IFSL had an ineffective compliance regime that failed to prevent the backdating and pre-signing of documents; An ex IFSL financial advisor (employee) applied a client's signature (on the client's behalf) to a client file with no recorded rationale, authority or instruction; and IFSL failed to ensure that its employees on every occasion adequately disclosed its commission or fee arrangements to clients, contrary to the regulatory regime with which they were required to comply.     
Agency: Isle of Man Financial Services Authority
Source of Data: (click here)