1 Our Service
1.1 Pension Claims Advice is registered in England and Wales under registered number
Our registered office is at Pensions Claims Advice is regulated by the Claims Management
356 Blackmoorfoot Road, Huddersfield, HD4 5NH.
Regulator in respect of regulated claims management activities, authorisation number CRM
26335
1.2 Pensions Claims Advice provides a mis-sold pension claims service in relation to
pension transfers out of all types of pension schemes. We can examine the advice and
service provided to you to see if you were incorrectly advised to transfer your pension. In
summary:
Once we have received your completed and signed pre-contract and fact find
document, we will carry out an initial assessment based upon your responses and
consider if it is in your best interests to pursue a claim. We will also assess whether any
alternative routes would be better for you such as contacting the Financial Services
Ombudsman (FOS) or Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) directly or
instructing a solicitor. We will record our assessment decision and advise you of this in
writing.
If you decide to instruct us to pursue your claim we will ask you to review and sign this
document and will provide you with a letter of authority to sign so that we may contact
your Financial Adviser, previous pension provider and new pension provider on your
behalf.
1.3 You will have a ‘cooling off’ period of fourteen (14) days from signing the Terms and
Conditions in which you can cancel the agreement with us without any charge.
1.4 After the “cooling off” period has expired, we will carry out a full assessment of the viability
of your claim by asking you to provide us with any documentation that you have in respect
of the pension transfer, asking you detailed questions regarding the transfer of your pension
and examining the information and documents obtained from your Financial Adviser and
pension providers using your letter of authority.
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1.5 We will advise you in writing of our findings, suggested next steps and proposed approach to
your claim. Typical approaches we may consider taking are as follows:
If we believe that you were wrongly transferred out of your previous pension we will
submit a letter of claim to your Financial Adviser.
Where your Financial Adviser rejects your claim we may submit it to the FOS for
consideration if we believe this is the best course of action. We will assess this and
advise you of this submission before we go ahead with this.
If your Financial Adviser no longer exists we will seek to submit your claim to the FSCS
or to the Financial Adviser professional indemnity insurer.
1.6 We will keep you informed of the progress of your claim at all times and will consult with you
before taking any steps in relation to your claim.
1.7 If an offer of compensation is made, we will assess this offer, benchmark it against any
available and relevant industry guidelines in respect of compensation payments (including
guidelines published by the Financial Conduct Authority and/ or the FOS (the Guidelines) and
provide you with a recommendation as to whether to accept it or not.
1.8 We will then provide you with an invoice for our services based on our Success Fee as shown
in clause 3 of this agreement.
2 Your Obligations
2.1 You will, by signing the letter of authority we provide to you, appoint us as your agent so
that we can liaise with your Financial Adviser, your pension providers, your Financial Adviser
professional indemnity insurers, the FOS, and the FSCS (as appropriate).
2.2 You must ensure that you always supply truthful, complete and accurate information.
2.3 You must forward any correspondence which you receive regarding your claim to us and you
must provide us with any and all information and documents which are relevant to your
claim, and which you possess, such as any documentation or information about your new or
old pension, and anything given to you by your Financial Adviser. We will rely upon the
responses and documentation you provide to assist us with our assessment of your claim
and the best way to pursue it.
2.4 You must promptly reply to any requests for further information and documents we make
with as much detail as possible.
2.5 You must promptly pay our Fees in accordance with Clause 3 below.
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2.6 Whilst providing services to you we will control and process data relating to you for legal,
administrative and management purposes and you consent to this (as defined in the Data
Protection Act 1998). We are registered as a Data Controller under the Data Protection Act
1998 with the Information Commissioner’s Office under registration number ZA128514. We
will in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 follow strict security procedures in the
storage and disclosure of your data.
3 Our Fees
3.1 If we are not successful in securing an offer of compensation for you, you will not have to
pay any fee to us.
3.2 If we are successful in securing an offer of compensation for you, we will review the offer,
benchmark the offer against industry guidelines (including the Guidelines) and make a
recommendation to you as to whether we consider it in your best interests to accept or
reject the offer.
3.3 If we recommend that you reject the offer of compensation, either:
You agree with our recommendation, we will attempt to re-negotiate an alternative
offer of compensation for you, and a Success Fee will then be payable should you
receive an alternative offer which we recommend that you accept; or
You disagree with our recommendation and you decide to accept the offer of
compensation, our Success Fee becomes due.
3.4 If we recommend that you accept the offer of compensation, either:
You agree with our recommendation and you decide to accept the offer of
compensation, our Success Fee becomes due; or
You disagree with our recommendation and you decide to reject the offer of
compensation, our Success Fee becomes due.
3.5 Our Success Fee is equal to 25% + VAT (totalling 28%) of the compensation offered to you.
3.6 You should be aware that compensation means financial benefit, which you receive as a
result of our service whether this is attributed to your pension fund or paid to you in cash.
3.7 In the event that compensation is paid to our Client Account, we will send you the
compensation less our fees within 7 working days.
3.8 If the compensation is paid directly to you or your pension scheme, we will send you an
invoice for our Success Fee. This invoice will become payable within 14 days of you, or your
pension scheme, receiving the compensation offered.
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3.9 If any Success Fee remains outstanding after 14 days of the date of you receiving
compensation, or 14 days after receiving our invoice, we reserve the right to refer your debt
to third parties to pursue you for payment on our behalf.
3.10 Illustrative examples of how our Success Fee will be calculated:
If you receive an offer of compensation of £30,000 and we recommend that you reject
this offer, but you decide to accept the offer, we will charge you £5,400, leaving you
with £24,600.
If you receive an offer of compensation of £30,000 and we recommend that you accept
that offer and you disagree, you will not receive the compensation and we will charge
you £5,400, which you will be liable to pay to us.
3.11 We may also make charges in the event that you terminate your contract after the 14 day
cooling off period. Please see section 4 below.
4 Cancellation
4.1 If you decide that you do not want to proceed with our services you can cancel your contract
by post, telephone, email or using the enclosed Cancellation Form.
4.2 If you cancel during the first 14 days after you sign this agreement you will not have to pay
any fee to us.
4.3 We can cancel this agreement if you materially breach any of your responsibilities and you
fail to rectify your breach within 28 days of us telling you (which we will attempt to do by
both telephone and post).
4.4 If this agreement is cancelled after the fourteen day cooling off period but before an offer is
made, by either you (in accordance with clause 4.1) or us (in accordance with clause 4.3), we
will charge you the value of the work that we have undertaken up to the point that you
cancel, at a charge of £60 per hour.
5 Complaints
5.1 We hope that you will be very pleased with the service that we provide but in the unlikely
event that you have a complaint please ask for a copy of our complaints procedure.
5.2 We will acknowledge your complaint within five days and will seek to provide a full response
within four weeks. If we are unable to do so we will send you a holding response and issue a
final response within eight weeks of your initial complaint.
5.3 If you are not satisfied with the handling of our complaint, or we do not respond within eight
weeks you may refer the matter to the Legal Ombudsman.
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6 Other Important Information
6.1 You are entitled to seek further advice in relation to your claim and to consider what services
might be most appropriate to your claim for compensation. We will advise you after both
our initial and full assessment of whether any alternative methods would be more
appropriate for pursuing your claim. In particular you have the right to shop around and you
should be aware of the free services provided by the Financial Ombudsman Service.
6.2 The provisions of the Contract (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 are excluded from this
agreement, which means that only you have and we have any rights under this contract.
However, we can assign our rights and responsibilities in this contract provided that the
person we assign it to agree to provide the same services to you in accordance with this
contract. We will write to you before any assignment is made to ensure that you are aware
that it is happening. You have the option to cancel your contract without charge in these
circumstances.
6.3 Our service does not include progressing any matter to civil court proceedings although you
should be aware that this is an option that you are entitled to pursue in the recovery of
compensation should the pursuit of a claim with us be unsuccessful.