Final salary or defined benefit is a specified (i.e. guaranteed) amount of benefit, such as “1/60 of your pay upon retirement for each year of service,” is provided by defined benefit pension plans. In such an arrangement, the employee was often guaranteed a pension that was either an average of their earnings during their career or a predetermined percentage of their wage during the years before to retirement. The ratio would be based on the length of employment with the employer. Increases after retirement are often somewhat discretionary but must adhere to legislative minimums.
Sometimes financial advisers can advocate transferring out of the final salary pension scheme offered to you by a workplace. Pension transfers are a big decision and transferring out of a final salary scheme is rarely good advice. However, many people were advised to do that due to negligent financial advice.
Those who received negligent financial advice to transfer out of their defined benefit pension scheme were often mis-sold the benefits of doing so. For those looking to recover their pension money, there are strict time limits within which to make a compensation claim. It is therefore important to get specialist help as soon as possible. Do not leave yourself out of pocket for your retirement.
TLW Solicitors are financial mis-selling experts and specialise in helping clients claim compensation when they have been given negligent financial advice to transfer their pensions.
Start your pension transfer claim online today, request a callback or call TLW Solicitors on 0800 169 5925.
Also referred to as a defined benefit pension or final salary schemes, these are a type of workplace pension. Rather than gradually building up a pension pot for retirement, it provides a specified pension payment for the rest of your life, depending on your final employee terminal earnings or average salary. A defined benefit may be provided as a lump-sum payment or a series of payments. Some of these schemes also have generous death benefits.
As defined benefit pension or final salary schemes are usually a very solid and dependable source of income for retirement, there must be an extremely good reason for someone to want to transfer this into a riskier type of investment.
Getting the right financial advice on this is very important. There are strict rules provided by Government watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority, that financial advisers must follow to ensure the pension transfer has not been mis-sold. If you feel that you weren’t given the right pension advice, please contact us and we can talk through your options.
People who worked in the public sector or nationalised industries, such as those listed below, may have been a member of a defined benefit/final salary employer pension scheme:
In June 2020, Government backed financial industry watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) announced measures to tackle the issues in the defined benefit pension transfer market. Pension freedoms introduced by the Government in 2015 have already been implicated as a source of consumer harm by the FCA.
Defined benefit pension mis-selling can unknowingly occur due to poor financial advice leaving you with less than you were expecting in your retirement. TLW Solicitors specialise in helping clients who have been given negligent final salary pension advice.
Whilst these transfers may have been made many years ago, it is still possible to claim compensation if you are the widow of someone who transferred their pension, or if the Independent Financial Adviser has gone out of business, has been taken over or changed its name.
Until our specialist team of financial mis-selling lawyers get an up-to-date valuation of the pension that our clients would have had, clients often do not realise how much they have lost out, which can be a significant amount. TLW Solicitors are specialists in mis-sold defined benefit (final salary) pension plan transfers. Speak to us today to find out if you have a claim.
Defined benefit or final salary pension schemes, also sometimes called a ‘company pension’, are generally very dependable pension schemes that promise to pay somebody a specific amount from their retirement until the end of their life, based on criteria under the scheme.
Defined benefit and final salary pensions are usually very expensive schemes for employers to run, so they are usually limited to large companies, government entities like the NHS, emergency services, the armed forces, local authorities, or former nationalised industries such as coal mining, shipbuilding, steelworks and rail.
Because they are so good, and depending on individual circumstances, transferring out of a defined benefit or final salary scheme is rarely advisable, yet many people have been told to do just that. Getting the right advice about transferring your pension is extremely important.
If you or a loved one have been advised to transfer out of a defined benefit or final salary pension scheme and feel you have lost out financially, then contact us at TLW Solicitors.
One of our team will be happy to discuss your case on a no-obligation basis to see if the advice you were given to transfer out was suitable or not. We can then explore the different options for making a compensation claim.
The claims process varies from case to case and depends very much on if the financial adviser who gave the transfer advice is still in business. If they are no longer in business, the claim would go to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), a government-backed body set up to compensate those who have lost out when a financial firm fails and is unable to meet claims against it.
This is generally a much quicker process because you do not have someone to argue against or to dispute the allegations. As these cases can be quite high value, then there may be arguments from the adviser to say that the advice was suitable. If that is the case, then the claim may be referred to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), or it may be that we have to start court proceedings to resolve your claim.
If the claim is successful, the amount of compensation differs from case to case. But broadly speaking our specialist team of financial mis-selling lawyers aim to recover the amount of money that you lost by transferring out of your defined benefit or final salary pension scheme.
This can be quite a complex calculation, and it usually involves getting expert evidence with financial projections as to what you would have received had you stayed where you were, rather than what you are getting now following the transfer advice.
The amount of compensation that is recovered depends on the pension scheme that you transferred out of and your particular circumstances. We have acted in cases with compensation payments ranging from tens of thousands, right up to hundreds of thousands of pounds.
After reviewing your claim and if we believe that the advice you were given to transfer was unsuitable, in most cases we will run your case on a no-win, no-fee agreement.
That means if the case is unsuccessful for any reason, then you will not be charged for the work that we have done.
Even if the adviser who gave the advice to transfer out of your pension scheme has gone out of business, it is still possible to make a claim through the FSCS.
What really sets us apart is our financial mis-selling team’s experience. We have specialist solicitors who focus on this area and have access to a range of leading industry experts who can help calculate the losses which someone may have suffered because of unsuitable transfer advice.
If you or a loved one were advised to transfer out of a defined benefit or final salary pension scheme and feel you have lost out financially, then contact us at TLW Solicitors by ringing the team, sending an email or fill out a callback form.
A member of our specialist team will then have a no-obligation discussion with you about your case and talk through your options.
If you are concerned that you or a loved one were not given the right advice about leaving a final salary/defined benefit pension, please call us on 0800 169 5925 or use our online form and our team will contact you for an initial, no-obligation consultation.
It is important to get advice as soon as possible as strict time limits can apply.
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