Our aim is that those who have genuinely lost out due to bad advice, poor service, outright fraud, and other such causes, should be compensated and should keep the vast bulk of the restitution obtained, whether that restitution is paid by the firm responsible or by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). We only bring genuine claims with the specifics accurately spelled out. We do not employ the ‘throw lots of mud and hope some sticks’ approach that most CMCs and some law firms – who should know better – employ. We only act for those who we believe are honest and have a genuine cause for complaint. Any person for whom we decline to act is free to use a so-called ‘claims management company’. If you don’t have a genuine claim and are just after some ‘free money’ then you need to be aware that committing fraud by false representation is a criminal offence. We do not pay ‘go away’ money to fraudulent complainants and we would not expect any other firm to do so.
Introductions
We accept clients referred to us by other advisers but we do not pay introduction fees of any kind. Our service is built down to a price for the benefit of clients and our profit margin is minimal. Where a client is introduced by another adviser, we guarantee that we shall not try to poach the client or accept a transfer of the client to us even if it is at the client’s request.
Some Example Cases, Our Fees and CMC Comparisons
Mr H and Mr C were BlueInfinitas victims. We won them compensation of £50,000 and £46,872 respectively. Mrs H was a Guinness Mahon victim. We won her £21,500. Mr M was a Store First victim. We won him £61,756. Mr B was the victim of a defined benefit pension transfer that should never have taken place. We won him £74,000.
Our fees for these cases were typically in the range £500 – £1500. We price according to the work involved whereas we typically find that so-called ‘claims management companies’ (CMCs) charge around 35% plus VAT of any compensation they obtain, so they would have charged Mr C, in the example above, £19,686. Claims firm Goodwin Barrett charges even more – 40% plus VAT. Why do they charge so much? Well, for one thing, unlike us, they are in it for the money. We do claims management to restore the finances of those who’ve been unfairly wronged and to help restore the reputation of the financial services profession in the process. Think about it. If a victim has lost £100,000 thanks to a fraud like LCF or BlueInfinitas and a supposed ‘white knight’ grabs £35,000 of their FSCS compensation, when they could have kept all of it by complaining direct, they are still £35,000 down on the whole transaction. Are they going to have a positive impression of the profession? We don’t think so. They’re still hurting.
Another reason why CMCs charge so much is that most of them generate large numbers of baseless claims by dishonest people, most of which fail. Obviously though, baseless claims are still expensive to process, so they waste money trying it on. We regard their activities as a form of legalised mugging and extortion. Their predatory practices raise costs for all consumers and clog up the Financial Ombudsman Service and Financial Services Compensation Scheme. If we handle all the honest claims and CMCs only have the fraudulent clients and cases to work with, most or all of which they’ll lose, then sooner or later the unethical ones will go out of business or start operating a more honest business model.
