The Financial Ombudsman Service (“FOS”) has ruled that five investors in a film tax avoidance scheme should be awarded £2.6m following a claim against their advisers 20Twenty Independent Ltd.  FOS ruled that the investment advice given was unsuitable and that they were not informed of the true nature of the risk that they were taking […]

The Commission has decided to require advisers working for Jersey businesses and who advise clients who are not Professional Clients to be qualified at level 4 wherever those clients are resident. This affects all persons registered to undertake classes C2 and D3 investment business. This booklet sets out the qualifications that are available from CISI […]

Basma Al Sulaiman v  (i) Credit Suisse Securities (Europe) Limited; and (ii) Plurimi Capital LLP [2013] EWHC 400 (Comm) http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Comm/2013/400.html In a strongly worded judgment, the Commercial Court has dismissed a large misselling claim brought by an individual in connection with a number of investments she had made in structured notes on a leveraged basis.  […]

FSA has published the results of a mystery shopping review into the quality of investment advice in banks and building societies. It carried out the review over six months in the middle of 2012 and assessed six major firms in the retail banking sector over 231 mystery shops. The mystery shoppers claimed to want to […]

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) is currently undertaking one of four planned thematic reviews into firms’ compliance with new rules following the Retail Distribution Review (RDR). Here are the 39 questions the regulator is asking its sample of 50 firms – and which you should be thinking about too… 1. Are services offered by your […]

  In November 2012 the FSA published a paper ‘Conflicts of Interest between asset managers and their customers’. This can be found at http://www.fsa.gov.uk/static/pubs/other/conflicts-of-interest.pdf Whilst this is geared towards investment managers and stockbrokers, it is actually a useful paper to read by the Financial Planner, helping to identify what questions they should ask a discretionary […]

Final guidance aimed at stopping financial firms from running incentive schemes that encourage mis-selling was published by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) on 16 January 2013. A review on the issue, which was published by the FSA in September 2012, examined the use of sales incentives and applied to insurers, banks, building societies and investment […]

INTRODUCTION I “Financial Advisers” I shall deal with only one category of financial adviser and will not attempt to deal with the myriad of individuals that may fall within the title. This paper is limited to those who provide services to ordinary members of the public in relation to investments such as blue chip stocks […]