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FCA to consider British Steel retirement support plan

The Financial Conduct Authority is planning to negotiate a compensation plan for the thousands of British steelworkers who are facing retirement problems after a multi-million dollar pension dispute.

This comes after the National Audit Office, which oversees parliamentary finance, in October he said will investigate the FCA on its allegations against the British Steel Pension Scheme (BSPS), from 2017.

The NAO investigation would be the first investigation into UK financial regulators and following Welsh lawmakers’ claims that the failure and delay of FCA rules for independent financial advisers (IFA) had resulted in thousands of former BSPS members being misqualified. add valuable pensions.

The FCA said Wednesday it had begun gathering evidence and is expected to begin negotiations by the end of March. It also said that their analysis found that almost half of BSPS members received “inappropriate” pension reform advice, which they described as “very special case”.

The FCA said a restructuring plan would be put in place to consult IFA concerned with the transfer of British Steel pension to review the advice it gave to customers and to provide compensation if they were found to be ineligible. This could prevent the affected BSPS members from appealing to the FCA to reconsider their case.

The FCA has already urged 7,700 members of the former British Steel scheme to reconsider their decision to retire and complain if they are worried.

The supervisor warned IFAs in a Wednesday letter to be prepared to meet procurement costs and not to sell goods in anticipation of action. It stated that it would be possible for any of them to try to avoid debt.

In September the director general went to Port Talbot meet with metalworkers who are suspected of receiving poor pension advice that may be eligible for pay, along with the Financial Ombudsman Service and Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

The misdemeanor sale came after the Pension Regulator approved BSPS to be released from Tata Steel, their sponsor, in 2017. As part of the nearly 8,000 steel restructuring process they moved their money into the riskier system, which legally required the advice to be taken. at a cost of £ 30,000. The Employment and Pensions Committee in 2018 said many had been at risk of unscrupulous financial advisers.

On Wednesday, an independent financial adviser, Al Rush, who campaigned for the steel industry, said: “Prevention would be much better than cure and it is important to remember that this is a discussion.

He added: “BSPS’s economic damage reaches hundreds of millions of dollars and it is a retirement benefit that low-income people need to be kept inside, not confiscated.”

The caretaker presented his first fine in August to a counselor who described him as “a serious failure” on the idea of ​​converting retirement benefits to members of the British Steel pension scheme.


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