The end for pension cold calling?
There is not much more annoying than answering your phone to a cold call, especially if it could leave you open to pension fraud.
Scammers often use cold calls to try to get vulnerable or unwary people to transfer their pension savings into unregulated and niche investments offering high and unlikely returns.
It is always a good idea to ignore these calls especially if you don’t recognise the number or if it is from an unregulated firm.
But pension scammers still managed to steal an average of ÂŁ91,000 from victims in 2017, according to the Financial Conduct Authority and the Pensions Regulator.
Now the Government is taking steps to stop it. The Treasury confirmed in the Budget that it will press ahead with a ban on pensions cold calling.
Regulations will be introduced in Parliament and will need to be approved by MPs, but once released will make pensions cold calling a civil offence.
Firms making the calls can then be fined up to £500,000 by the Information Commissioners Office.
The Treasury is also going further by giving Trading Standards further funding to help provide telephone call blocking technology to stop all types of nuisance calls.
Eventually the only calls you will have left to ignore are those from your mum, and you should probably take those occasionally.
- The value of an investment and any income from it can fall as well as rise and you may not get back the original amount invested.
