Retail Services – Bad advice carries a cost

You’ve built up your business and invested for retirement, but your nest egg has been dented by poor or even fraudulent advice. Sarah Perry provides some crumbs of comfort.

When you act on investment advice from a professional and you later discover a problem, you can seek redress. But time is against you and often the problem is compounded by the time it can take to discover an investment is worth less than expected or worse, has now attracted the attention of the tax authorities.

Despite the ability to seek compensation, confidence in the financial sector continues to be undermined by headlines about pensioners losing a large part of their nest egg or the plight of soon-to-be bankrupt celebrities who innocently signed up to a tax avoidance scheme now under scrutiny from HMRC.