Mis sold PEPs have for a long time been a popular type of investment for individuals in the United Kingdom, with many people committing significant amounts of money and large portions of their net worth to investment plans which very often have not ‘paid off’ or have performed badly leaving them much worse off financially than they were before.
Personal equity plans are investment products which are generally focused on stocks, shares, or business investments that are often ill advised or perform much worse than expected.
Often these products are not only miss sold, but are also placed into funds that will not perform as expected due to the nature of the investment, for example some have been placed into systems similar in principle to penny stocks, other have been placed into extremely high risk investment funds which have a huge potential for losses (which in many cases has happened).
Personal equity plans are one of the most often miss sold investment products alongside SIPPs self invested personal pensions and other general bad advice from IFA’s who may or may not be unregulated (Independent financial advisors).
With the PPI claims epidemic about to draw to a close (29th August) there is now a major gap in the market for individuals who have been mis sold various financial products, be it mortgages, pension investments, personal investments, property investments and a whole range of different investment products, many of these are expected to be claimable on a no win no fee basis.
Examples Of Miss Sold PEP’s Include:
- Investments in businesses with a high probability to fail
- Investments in risky stocks
- Investments in risky shares of portions of companies’ instead of true shares
- Investments in shares of companies with no dividend payment
- Investments where the risk factor is not explained before the beginning of proceedings
Of paramount importance is also the fact as to whether or not the sales representative or financial adviser spoke to you about your attitude towards risk, this is important because as with many investments you could be facing personal losses with PEP’s (personal equity plans).
Personal equity plans often have unregulated terms and not much in the way of protection from exposure for the investor, meaning things could go badly quite quickly for the investor.
It is a professional duty of IFA’s (Independent financial advisers) to provide first class financial advice irrespective of their own motives for profit, the financial advice should be in the best interests of the client, not in the best interests of the adviser, if this is not the case there could be cause for an IFA claim.
Unregulated IFA advice and investments has been a big problem in the United Kingdom for well over a decade, as has the problem of mis sold investments, with so many investments miss sold to the British public it is thought that between PEP, SIPP and other investments there is compensation due in the billions to be awarded to the British public.