Warning: Late repayments can cause you serious money problems. For help, go to moneyhelper.org.uk. We are a broker not a lender.
Sep 22, 2015
Good morning Loan calculators and welcome to this weeks edition of the simple finance blog. It was a week in which a Mr. McNeil landed a £350,000 fine, Cardiff airport saw an emergency landing from a Thomson flight with 200 passengers onboard and Volkswagen openly admitted to "screwing up" emissions testing for their American vehicles. All in all an interesting start to the week. I can feel your all still interested in the fine so as my main objective is to keep my loan calculators abreast of what's going on with all matters Financial please allow me to summarize.
Mr Mcneil was the finance director of keydata investment services Ltd. Keydata sold investments to retail investors via IFAs. These products were underpinned by SLS capital who dealt in life settlement policies. Trouble was SLS failed to make payments to Keydata in fact benefitting from 4.2M of Keydata's funds instead. This effectively hide the fact that SSL was in trouble. The fine was issued as in the words of the FCA Mr Mcneil failed to act with due care, skill and diligence and failed to notify them of significant risk in their firm. Keydata was declared insolvent and placed in administration in 2009. Simple finance never really is simple is it.
As this case demonstrates, there is no safety even in numbers. Keydata managed 103M of investments between July and November of 2005. Scary stuff for us all to think about. One thing we can take out of this however is the deterrent this sort of fine will act as for others out there intent on misleading their customers in such a massive way.
As you have heard me say many times before a smart loan calculator spreads their investments. Don't put all your eggs in one basket, as you never know when the chicken will stop laying and we all want to end up with a large retirement omelet right?
That's all for now my beloved loan calculators
Take care from all at simple finance.
FCA Decision Notices for Stewart Ford, Mark Owen and Peter Johnson. These cases have been referred to the Upper Tribunal.
http://www.fca.org.uk/news/fca-fines-and-prohibits-craig-mcneil