Standard Terms and Conditions

SECTION 1 OUR SERVICE

1. We are M R Consumer Services Ltd Ltd (FCC) registered in England and Wales. Company number 07102609. We trade as Financial Claims Consultants.
2. Financial Claims Consultants provides a service primarily for mis-sold Pension products, however, we will also examine other mis-sold products or instances where Financial Services companies appear to have breached the FCA rules. We examine the advice and service previously provided by your Financial Adviser (IFA) to ascertain whether you were correctly advised with regard to any one or more of these transactions.
3. Once we have received your completed and signed pre-contract and fact-finding document, we will carry out an initial assessment based upon your responses and consider if it is in your best interests to pursue a claim. We will also assess whether any alternative routes would be better for you, such as contacting the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) or Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) directly or instructing a solicitor. We will record our assessment decision and advise you of this in writing.
4. If you decide to instruct us to pursue your claim we will ask you to review and sign this document and will provide you with blank letters of authority to sign so that we may contact your IFA, previous pension provider, and new pension provider on your behalf. We may also contact your new employer’s pension scheme, if applicable, to ascertain if a transfer to that scheme would be possible.
5. You will have a ‘cooling off’ period of fourteen (14) days from signing these terms and conditions in which you can cancel the agreement with us without any charge.
6. After the ‘cooling off’ period has expired, we will carry out a full assessment of the viability of your claim by asking you to provide us with any documentation that you have in respect of the pension transfer, asking you detailed questions regarding the transfer of your pension and examining the information and documents obtained from your IFA and pension providers using your letter of authority.
7. We will advise you in writing of our findings, suggested next steps and proposed approach to your claim. Typical approaches we may consider taking are as follows:
8. If we believe that you were wrongly advised in relation to your pension we will submit a letter of claim to your IFA.
9. Where your claim is rejected by your IFA we may submit it to the FOS for consideration if we believe this is the best course of action. We will assess this and advise you of this submission before we go ahead with this.
10. If your IFA no longer exists we will seek to submit your claim to the FSCS or to the IFA’s professional indemnity insurer.
11. We will keep you informed of the progress of your claim at all times and will consult with you before taking any steps in relation to your claim.
12. If an offer of compensation is made, we will assess this offer, benchmark it against any available and relevant industry guidelines in respect of compensation payments (including guidelines published by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and/ or the FOS (the Guidelines)) and provide you with a recommendation as to whether to accept it or not.
13. We will then provide you with an invoice for our services based on our Success Fee as shown in Section 4 of these terms and conditions.

SECTION 2 YOUR OBLIGATIONS

1. You will, by signing the letter of authority we provide to you, appoint us as your agent so that we can liaise with parties that we feel are integral to your claim.
2. You must ensure that you always supply truthful, complete and accurate information.
3. You must forward any correspondence which you receive regarding your claim to us and you must provide us with any and all information and documents which are relevant to your claim, which you possess. We will rely upon the responses and documentation you provide to assist us with our assessment of your claim and the best way to pursue it.
4. You must promptly reply to any requests for further information and documents we make with as much detail as possible.
5. The compensation will be paid direct to Financial Claims Consultants who will deduct our fee + VAT at the rate of 20% with the remaining amount to be forwarded to the client.
6. Whilst providing services to you we will control and process data relating to you for legal, administrative and management purposes and you consent to this and in particular to the processing of any of your sensitive personal data (as defined in the Data Protection Act 1998).

SECTION 3 OUR FEES

1. If we are not successful in securing an offer of compensation for you, you will not have to pay any fee to us.
2. If we are successful in securing an offer of compensation for you, we will review the offer, benchmark the offer against industry guidelines and make a recommendation to you as to whether we consider it in your best interests to accept or reject the offer.
3. If we recommend that you reject the offer of compensation, if:

• You disagree with our recommendation, we will attempt to re-negotiate an alternative offer of compensation for you, and a Success Fee will then be payable should you receive an alternative offer which we recommend that you accept; or
• You agree with our recommendation and you decide to accept the offer of compensation, our Success Fee becomes due.

1. If we recommend that you accept the offer of compensation, and:

• You agree with our recommendation and you decide to accept the offer of compensation, our Success Fee becomes due; or
• You disagree with our recommendation and you decide to reject the offer of compensation, our Success Fee becomes due.

1. Our success fee is equal to 20% plus VAT at the current rate.
2. You should be aware that compensation means financial benefit which you receive as a result of our service whether this is attributed to your pension fund or paid to you in cash.
3. Your compensation will be paid direct into our client account. We will then deduct our success fee and transfer the remainder to you. This will usually be done by BACS transfer unless requested otherwise. We are unable to transfer cash payments.
4. Illustrative examples of how our Success Fee will be calculated:

For Example 

If we recover £1,000 in compensation, our fee would be £240.00 (inclusive of VAT). You would receive £760.00.

If we recover £3,000 in compensation, our fee would be £720.00 (inclusive of VAT). You would receive £2280.00.        

If we recover £10,000 in compensation, our fee would be £2400.00 (inclusive of VAT). You would receive £7600.00.

1. If you receive an offer of contribution to your pension scheme of £2,000 and we recommend that you accept that offer and you agree to accept this offer, we will charge you a Success Fee of £480 inclusive of VAT and you will receive £1,520.
2. If you receive an offer of compensation of £10,000 and we recommend that you accept that offer and you accept our recommendation we will charge you a success fee of £2,400 inclusive of VAT, however if you disagree, you will not receive the compensation and we will charge you £2,400.
3. We may also make reasonable expenses charges in the event that you terminate your contract after the 14 day cooling off period. Please see section 4 below on cancellation.

SECTION 4 CANCELLATION

1. If you decide that you do not want to proceed with our services you can cancel the agreement by writing to us at any time.
2. If you cancel during the first 14 days after you sign this agreement you will not have to pay any fee to us.
3. If the agreement is cancelled outside the cooling off period then the fee will be based on the work undertaken at the point of cancellation. The fee will be £10 per DSAR and Standard Complaint, £5 for Fee Pack Costs and an hourly rate of £60 per hour. For example, if we had worked on your case for 2 hours then the total cancellation costs would be £135. You can cancel this contract using our cancellation form, in email, or by writing to us.
4. For the avoidance of doubt you “the client” will not be liable for any charge in respect of the claim if the claim is pursued and the company pays no compensation.

SECTION 5 COMPLAINTS

1. We hope that you will be pleased with the service that we provide but in the unlikely event that you have a complaint please ask for a copy of our complaints procedure.
2. We will acknowledge your complaint within five days and will seek to provide a full response within four weeks. If we are unable to do so we will send you a holding response and issue a final response within eight weeks of your initial complaint.

SECTION 6 OTHER IMPORTANT INFORMATION

1. You are entitled to seek further advice in relation to your claim and to consider what services might be most appropriate to your claim for compensation. We will advise you after both our initial and full assessment of whether any alternative methods would be more appropriate for pursuing your claim. In particular, you have the right to shop around and you should be aware of the free services provided by the Financial Ombudsman Service and Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
2. The provisions of the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 are excluded from this agreement which means that only you have and we have any rights under this agreement. However, we can assign our rights and responsibilities in this agreement provided that the person we assign it to agree to provide the same services to you in accordance with this agreement. We will write to you before any assignment is made to ensure that you are aware that it is happening. You have the option to cancel this agreement without charge in these circumstances.
3. Our services and your potential claim are personal to you, and for this reason, you are not able to assign this agreement to any other person.
4. Our service does not include progressing any matter to civil court proceedings although you should be aware that this is an option that you are entitled to pursue in the recovery of compensation should the pursuit of a claim with us be unsuccessful.

SECTION 7 YOUR CONSENT

1. This is our standard terms of business upon which we intend to rely. For your own benefit and protection, you should read these terms carefully before signing them.

• confirm that I have read and understood these terms of business and wish to proceed with immediate effect.

CLIENT AGREEMENT

AGREEMENT

This agreement is a binding legal contract between you and us  M R Consumer Services Ltd trading as Financial Claims Consultants in respect of all works you instruct us to carry out on your behalf and any subsequent work that we advise appropriate (not including any court claim). Before you sign please read everything carefully.

Words like ‘success fee’, ‘win’ & ‘lose’ are explained in this document and the enclosed Schedule 1 which contains interpretation and conditions of this agreement. Please read this document very carefully.

Agreement date:

File Reference FCC/0001

We, the claims consultants, Financial Claims Consultants of 1 Queens Park Gate, 86 Richmond Park Road, BH8 8TQ

You the client, of ,

This agreement covers the following:

• All the activities listed in Section 1 ‘Our Service’ of the FCC Terms of Business enclosed with this document.

What is not covered

• Any court proceedings against Financial Ombudsman Service and/or Financial Services Compensation Scheme and/or those who advised you upon your SIPP/SSAS and /or your investments.
• Paying us
• In the event we are successful we would be remunerated at the agreed ‘NO WIN NO FEE’ as outlined in Section 3 ‘Our Fees’ of the FCC Terms of Business enclosed with this document.

Disbursements

• We do not charge for disbursements unless agreed in advance. If this were the case 100% of disbursements would be required to be paid as they arise.

Success Fee

• In the event we are successful we would be remunerated at the agreed ‘NO WIN NO FEE’ as outlined in Section 3 ‘Our Fees’ of the FCC Terms of Business enclosed with this document.

Value Added Tax

• We add VAT at the prevailing rate of 20% to the success fee

Other Points

Before you sign this agreement, please ensure you have read it thoroughly and if you do not understand any points please contact us for an explanation or clarity. Please ensure the information we have supplied is sufficient should you wish to go ahead with this agreement in particular:

1. Our Fees as laid out in ‘Section 3’ of our enclosed ‘Terms of Business’.
2. What your expectation is of Our Service as laid out in ‘Section 1’ of our enclosed ‘Terms of Business’
3. What your expectation is of Your Obligations as laid out in ‘Section 2’ of our enclosed ‘Terms of Business’
4. The circumstances and costs for cancelling our services as laid out in ‘Section 4’ of our enclosed ‘Terms of Business’
5. Your understanding of initiating a complaint against us as laid out in ‘Section 5’ of our enclosed ‘Terms of Business’

Signatures

Signed for the Financial Claims Consultants:

Signed by the client:

I confirm that FCC have explained to me the matters listed in ‘Other Points’ above.

Signed ………………………………………………………………………………………client

I specifically confirm that I have verbally explained to the client the matters listed in ‘Other Points’ above.

Signed ………………………………………………………………………………………..FCC

Schedule 1 – Interpretation and conditions of this agreement

The Success Fee

Our success fee is equal to 20% of the total compensation due to the client plus VAT.

Your Responsibilities

You must

• Give us instructions that allow us to do our work properly
• Not ask us to work in an improper manner or unreasonable way
• Not deliberately mislead us
• Co-operate with us
• Go to any expert examination or court hearing

For avoidance of doubt please read the appropriate section in our Terms of Business attached

Our Responsibilities

• Always act in your best interests
• Explain o you the risks of taking particular steps
• Give our best advice whether to accept an offer of settlement
• Give you the best information possible given the facts known to us
• Always respond to you in a timely manner
• Always use best endeavours to explain status updates

Explanation of words used

Disbursements

• Expenses outside of those included in the ‘No Win No Fee’ charges
• Traveling expenses if requested & required by the client

Lien

• Our right to keep all papers, documents & monies owed to us while waiting for settlement

Lose

• The FSCS has dismissed your claim and not willing to pay you the compensation or are withholding payment on our advice

What happens if I am awarded compensation?

• If you are awarded compensation then we will advise you immediately. Once the compensation arrives and clears in our bonded account we will transfer the compensation less our total fees plus any VAT due within 2 business days.

What happens if I am not awarded compensation?

• If you are not awarded compensation then we will advise you immediately. You will not be charged by us for works carried out on your behalf unless any disbursements are outstanding.

What happens when this agreement ends before you claim for damages?

• You can end this agreement at any time in which case the terms outlined in Section 4 of our Terms of Business apply.
• If we end this agreement then the terms outlined in Section 4 of our Terms of Business apply.
• Death – The agreement automatically ends if you die before your claim for compensation is concluded. However if your spouse, relatives or personal representatives wish to continue the claim for compensation we may be able to offer them a new agreement if this were appropriate as long as they agree to the same terms.