“Consumer protection should be about giving people the best advice and saying that ‘these are the areas that you should consider’.
“Removing the advice safeguard altogether isn’t necessarily the best way to go. If someone is living in Hong Kong, they might not want to have an adviser in the UK. At the same time, they need to know all the ins and outs and is every adviser overseas up to date on the UK? Some are and some aren’t.
“The UK is saying advisers overseas need to be ‘appropriately qualified’. Well what does that mean? Outside the UK, this is left open to interpretation,” he told IA.
However, Geraint Davies, managing director of Montfort International, an advisory firm specilalising in overseas pension transfers, said advisers outside the UK still lack adequate qualifications, making UK savers more susceptible to pension scams.
“Those who don’t charge a fee for their initial advice when asked to consider the position of a non-UK national resident in UK or a UK or non-UK national working ex-UK with regards to their financial affairs have absolutely no right to call themselves advisers.
“If they think that advice is to simply transact a pension to a Rops then they are fooling themselves and playing Russian roulette with their clients affairs and asking for regulatory trouble,” he told IA.
UK Rops reforms
The comments come just weeks after the UK announced wide-sweeping reforms to the way overseas pensions are tax and regulated.
From April next year, all Rops are required to be regulated in their country of origin. The UK is also looking at giving greater powers to existing pension providers to block suspicious transfers to a personal pension scheme – a move which could affect transfers into Rops.
