| | | Unregulated Investments with Sipps Pensions
An interesting article surfaced on the BBC website last week. Below are extracts from it with a link to the full article at the bottom of the page. Around 100,000 people have Sipps pensions at the moment and most of those people tend to be wealthier people. From April next year the Government is sweeping away most of the current pension rules and everyone will be able to invest in any assets under their Sipp Pension. Adverts are already promoting the tax advantages of investing in fine wine, stamps, diamond earrings and property. Caution is needed, Independent financial adviser Robert Reid of Syndaxi told BBC Radio 4's Money Box programme there could be trouble ahead. "My main concern is that companies which are not regulated such as property developers will be using SIPPs to entice people to make property purchases which may not be in their best interest long term," he said. "I think some developers will use it as an excuse to get rid of property that they were having difficulty with already." And he warned that on the whole people who buy will have little or no re-address. "It will be very difficult to raise any complaint about the advice or the position they find themselves in," he said. "If they go to the Ombudsman he will simply say 'the product is not regulated'. I do believe if SIPPs were regulated it would tighten this up." Many experts are concerned with the new pension reforms. They share the worries Robert Reid and believe that unregulated pensions open the flood gates for mis-selling and will lead to people making the wrong judgement calls. |
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