In Money Marketing this week the Financial Services Authority is warning advisers about the dangers of selling dodgy non regulated investment products. What about warning the public?

I have a horrible feeling that this is a case of closing the stable door once the horse has well and truly bolted. My feeling is that we are about to learn of a number of Ponzi style investment schemes and the FSA (the current regulator) are putting the industry on notice that they have uncovered some terrible advice practices by FSA regulated advisers.

Barclays Bank are under attack at the moment for their poorly qualified in house financial advisers selling High Risk products to customers who wanted a Low Risk product. This is not uncommon and thankfully these consumers are going through the process of receiving appropriate compensation after many lost half of the cash deposited with the Barclays Adviser.

Whilst the above case is terrible, there are worse horror stories where people have lost everything. The most public case of late is Bernard Madoff’s $5 Billion dollar scam, whereby he promised higher investment returns than anybody else and peoples greed drove them to believe the hype, remember if it’s too go to be true, it probably is.

We have our own fraudsters here in the UK and they are rife, so please please be aware when parting with you hard earned cash. Check that the firm you are dealing with is regulated with the FSA http://www.fsa.gov.uk/register/home.do and then always ask the adviser if the product you are being offered is a regulated product from a regulated product provider. You can check this also at the FSA as above.

In these tough times of low interest rates being paid on savings, some investment schemes may seem really attractive, please check and check again.

Caveat emptor.

Your Trumpo.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.