PENSION TRANSFERS AND OPT‐OUTS: GUIDELINES ON HOW TO GET STARTED IN PUTTING MATTERS RIGHT

The Securities and Investments Board (SIB) issued a paper addressed to self‐regulating organisations in May 1994 titled ‘Past Pension Transfers and Opt‐Outs: Model Guidance on Priority Cases and Complaints’. This set out in broad terms what product providers and independent financial advisers should start doing now in connection with past pension transfers and opt‐outs. This includes the criteria for identifying high priority cases and the guidance indicates what action should be taken to determine whether investors had been mis‐advised. The SIB paper sets the objectives for the exercise; the difficulty is knowing how to actually get started on the work. This is addressed in the following paper which describes the need to set up a project team to do the work, a computer database to analyse the information and the mechanism for identifying high priority files. A classification system is outlined together with details on how best to contact investors to obtain the best response rate with the most useful information. Finally, the issue of complaints is briefly addressed.