Past troubles
Rowanmoor has been faced with a number of complaints for several years, with the Fos finding against Rowanmoor in a sample case back in January 2022, involving due diligence errors.
It found the Sipp operator had failed to verify the integrity of an introducer firm it worked with on hundreds of high-risk self-invested personal pension investments.
The Fos said Rowanmoor should have spotted warning signs sooner that the regulated advice firm, CIB Life and Pensions Limited, was not giving its clients the full advice it had purported to.
Failure to do this resulted in client Mr T losing his occupational pension savings on an unregulated offshore property deal.
The Fos told Rowanmoor to drum up the cash needed to compensate the client fully, as well as take ownership of the investment so the Sipp can be closed and further fees prevented.
The investment - Cape Verde-based The Resort Group - had been sold to clients in combination with Rowanmoor Sipps by regulated advice firm CIB Life and Pensions Limited and its appointed representative RealSipp.
The Fos said Rowanmoor had received 1,387 introductions from CIB, which accounted for 26.9 per cent of all business received by the provider between 2009 and 2013. A quarter of these cases involved occupational pension transfers.
amy.austin@ft.com
