Mr & Mrs F saw our social media advert in August 2023 and came to us to discuss a potential Free Standing Additional Voluntary Contribution complaint. Mr F went away from the phone call with us to try and find out who their FSAVC’s were with, he was going to call their annuity provider Standard Life to find out.
Mr F came back to us in September 2023 letting us know their FSAVC’s were both with Scottish Equitable. Packs with forms were then sent out for Mr & Mrs F. We received these back and information requests were then sent off to Scottish Equitable.
The provider came straight back with the information for Mrs however they took a lot longer to provider Mr’s. They sent Mrs F’s information but didn’t confirm what the policy number was, so we had to go back them to ask for this. They confirmed it was the FSAVC policy, so a complaint for Mrs F was sent off in mid-October.
Mr F’s information still hadn’t come back so after a few chases from us requesting the information, we finally received it in the January. By this point Scottish Equitable had confirmed Mrs F’s FSAVC had been mis sold by another company called Willis Owen so they had forwarded our complaint to them and let us know that was who we had to deal with going forward. Willis Owen then requested a new form from the client so they could investigate the complaint.
Willis Owen then rejected the complaint for Mrs F, so we gathered all documents needed so that we could send the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) as we did not agree with Willis Owen’s rejection.
By this point it is January and we have finally received Mr F’s information with the policy number and stating his FSAVC was also sold by Willis Owen and the complaint should be sent there.
Complaint sent and Willis Owen also rejected Mr’s complaint, so we gathering the information up and sent Mr F’s complaint to the FOS aswell.
After 3-5 months of the FOS investigating both Mr & Mrs F’s complaints, we received a response in June stating Willis Owen had agreed to calculate any loss the clients may have had and uphold the complaints.
Mid July we had received offers for both Mr & Mrs F with Mr F being offered £10,216.72 and Mrs F being offered £10,169.89
Both clients were happy with the result of a positive conclusion.