24th August 2015

IFA letter to the FCA

*IFA letter to the FCA

Dear FCA, 24 8 2015

I logged in to the FCA Online Invoicing account on or about the 13^th August when the email below was received from you. I keyed in it the comments highlighted below and am yet to have a response whatsoever. I have paid the element I do not want to dispute the legitimacy of (i.e. FCA, FOS & MAS fees) using the premium credit option today and will delay paying anything else until you have responded, showing me your right to enforce debts on behalf of another legal entity (the FSCS) from whom you claim to be “Independent “and with whom I want to dispute their decisions/actions and the resulting inflated levy.

As you have failed to respond in any way so far to my registering a dispute of the levying of fees relating to SELF INVESTED pension failures, if you attempt to impose a fee surcharge of £250 or remove the option of using premium credit to settle any FSCS fees before this matter is agreed/resolved, then I will be taking matters further with my legal representatives and my MP (ccd here).

“I would like to dispute the change in FSCS policy to pay out on failed advice related to SIPPs. I am noting my dispute now whilst I look in to the legal ramifications of paying my FCA, FOS and MAS fees now, but challenging the FSCS on the issue. When I entered the industry, it was on the understanding that FSCS fees were offset using fines from polluters, but the chancellor and Treasury has allegedly taken these to fund injuries to servicemen, some of whom have been fighting an illegal war in Iraq (the Chilcott enquiry is still delayed and if it turns out that the war was illegal and the nation was mislead, then it should not be financial advisory firms who are penalised indirectly by the change in levy system), contrary to my personal belief system.” 

A SIPP is a SELF INVESTED pension and as such expecting ADVISORY firms to pay a penny for someone’s own (another word for SELF) errors when they are SELF INVESTING is contrary to natural justice. 

The FCA are failing to Police the misuse of SELF INVESTED pensions by consumers often with the involvement of Unregulated Firms or firms that have ceased to be regulated as significant cost to those firms who chose to remain in the industry post the imposed “Retail Distribution Review” which educed adviser number and is resulting in a vicious circle of increasing fees.

If the FCA acting as debt collectors on behalf of the FSCS wish to consider removing my authorisation for objecting on moral as well as financial grounds to this fee hike, mainly associated with SIPP problems, then they will simply be proving that the F-pack system is NOT independent of one another, nor of the Treasury and nor of the Chancellor who instigated the redirection of FCA fines which were supposed to penalise the polluter and reduce costs on the good firms in the first place. Redirection of fines in this way is a back handed taxation system, especially when used for treating injured service people who should be treated as part of the Military Covenant via general taxation.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION - ARTICLE 10 THE HUMAN RIGHTS ACT 1998:

This guarantees the right to pass information to other people and to receive information that other people want to give you. It also guarantees the right to hold and express opinions and ideas. Journalists and people who publish newspapers and magazines can use Article 10 to argue there should be no restrictions on what they write about. Artists and writers can use it to defend themselves against people who try to censor their work. Article 10 is a 'qualified' This means that the Government or a public authority may be allowed to restrict or interfere with the right in certain circumstances. The Government or the public authority must show that there was a clear legal basis for the restriction or interference. Its actions must pursue one of the eight aims set out in Article 10, which include: No 1 the prevention of crime; No.2 the protection of morals; No.3 the protection of other people's rights or reputations; No. 4 the protection of confidential information. It also has to show that the interference was 'necessary and proportionate' (that it was done for a very good reason and went no further than it needed to). 

Phil Castle

Independent Financial Adviser, Money Coach and Facilitator

Financial Escape Ltd 

* the content of the letter reproduced above is unedited by Panacea to allow Mr Castle’s feelings to be correctly expressed as intended.

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