Len R, a former offshore electronics engineer (who prefers to withhold his surname) and action group member from Aberdeen, had two pension funds when he had to stop work in 2005 after a series of cardiac operations.
"I didn't know much about money, my forte was engineering," he says.
Wanting to maximise income whilst protecting his wife for the future, he found an annuity advice firm online. He said: "They appeared to be independent, and they very quickly suggested I look at Rockingham, who started pushing ARM. I was told it was a 10-year term, I would be getting 10% a year with interest paid monthly, and I would have more in the pot than I started out with.
"I know if it sounds too good to be true it probably is, but everything they sent me suggested it was low-risk."
Having transferred one of his funds from Legal & General to a Sipp (self-invested pension) run by specialist Poynton York, Rockingham persuaded Mr R to transfer his other fund from Aegon into a Sipp run by Standard Life – generating a second set of commissions and fees, and with all the money in both invested in the ARM bonds.
In 2010 the payments stopped. "There was nothing I could do, I just thought how stupid I was," Mr R admits. "It really is quite desperate."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article