The FCA has set out its plans to take action against both Hartley Pensions Limited and an individual involved with the firm.
It has issued a pair of Warning Notices.
The notices are not the FCA’s final decisions and defendants have the right to make representations to the Regulatory Decisions Committee.
The notices do not include any details about proposed sanctions, or the name of the individual the regulator is proposing to take action against.
Hartley Pensions was a SIPP operator authorised and regulated by the FCA. It also provided administration for a small number SSAS, regulated by the Pensions Regulator.
It went into administration in 2022 after several regulatory interventions and a failure to find a buyer. An estimated 16,000 clients were hit by the collapse. It had been subject to a number of FCA requirements in early 2022 due to, “serious operational, financial and regulatory issues.”
The FCA alleges that Hartley provided it with false and misleading information and improperly withdrew and invested substantial amounts of customers’ pension funds, without their consent, to benefit an individual at the firm.
The FCA alleges that the individual dishonestly used the pension funds and made false representations to obtain money for a company that they owned. They then misled the FCA to conceal this misconduct.
In the years before it entered administration, Hartley Pensions had acquired the client books of several failed SIPP providers. It bought the Guinness Mahon book in February 2020 after the firm collapsed. The deal meant the transfer of 4,000 SIPPs previously administered by GMTC which suffered a string of problems and legal actions from unhappy clients.
Other SIPP books the firm acquired in recent years included GPC, Berkeley Burke SIPP and Greyfriars AM.
The FCA said transfers out to a new operator began in December 2024. Since then, around 6,000 clients have been contacted, of which 2,636 have been transferred.
The joint administrators expect the number of clients transferred to have risen to around 3,200 by early October.
In June UHY Hacker Young, the administrators of Hartley Pensions, said they had encountered issues in contacting its clients. They said Hartley’s company records have not been accurate with many clients contact details out of date.
There were 329 Hartley clients to have deceased that the administrators said they were aware of.
Members of the Hartley Pensions Action Group protested outside the High Court in May.
That was after the Financial Conduct Authority had to reassure Hartley Pensions clients following a letter sent by the joint administrators over the unauthorised movement of monies from their SIPPs by Hartley.