The multi-national firm said it had seen a growing number of reports from clients saying they have been contacted by firms offering to ‘liberate’ their retirement savings.
DeVere estimated that around two-thirds of its Qatar clients – many of whom are from the UK, the US, South Africa, India, Hong Kong and Continental Europe – have been approached by scammers since January.
“Since the beginning of the year, we have noted a month-on-month increase in clients telling our consultants that they have been persistently cold called, emailed or texted from so-called pension liberation companies,” said James Green, deVere Group’s Qatar area manager.
“It can be reasonably assumed that the majority are unauthorised and operating illegally.”
Bogus
Green warned that fraudsters typically tell clients they will receive ‘unrivalled returns’ by switching their funds into “often ridiculously high-risk and/or bogus investments”.
He pointed out that con artists fail to advise clients that transferring their savings can incur high charges and a hefty tax bill.
DeVere argued pension liberation scams are partly a result of the UK’s pension freedoms, which give those over 55 unfettered access to their British retirement funds.
The group’s Qatar area manager suggested the activities of liberation scammers are now heightened because they no longer need to convince both the provider and the pension holder into shifting funds into sham investments, just the pension holder.
Don’t fall foul
“The fraudsters claim savers can withdraw from their pension before they reach 55,” Green said. “They claim it is legal, which is not the case, and you’ll get penalised for it.”
“Our advice is always to resist, where possible, the temptation to ‘liberate’ or ‘release’ pensions to avoid the risk of compromising your retirement ambitions, making hasty decisions, falling foul of the con artists, and facing hefty tax charges.”
Figures from Action Fraud, published by the Office for National Statistics in June, revealed that the number of fraud cases in the UK linked to pension liberation schemes increased to 758 cases in 2014.
