A retired IFA currently battling an Ombudsman payment protection insurance claim dating from the 1980s says the lack of a complaints long-stop for advisers is "crazily unfair" and is pushing his MP to intervene.
Tony Mathers, formerly of Mathers Harrison & Co (IFA), said his retirement was being disrupted due to a ‘bogus' payment protection insurance claim dating back to 1987 and his health was suffering as a result.
Speaking to PA, he said: "I cannot have a proper, decent retirement. This is an injustice. I am not equal under the law according to the regulator, that is plain wrong."
The former IFA, who retired from his Leicestershire-based business after 42 years due to serious ill health, said he was lobbying MP Stephen Dorrell to push for change.
He said the MP for Charnwood was now pushing the Ombudsman to abide by Statutory Instrument 2326 - which stipulates that "an Ombudsman is to take into account whether an equivalent complaint would have been so dismissed under the former scheme in question".
The statutory instrument, dating from June 2011, effectively means advice prior to December 2001 should be dealt with by the Ombudsman in the same way as its predecessor, which abided by the long-stop. Alan Lakey's Adviser Alliance used the argument in its 2012 judicial review proceedings, but lost the case.
Mathers maintains the statutory instrument means the Ombudsman has been acting beyond its scope by not applying the 15-year claim limitation and his lobbying efforts will continue. His particular case, he said, relates to a payment protection insurance claim - a type of policy Mathers said he never wrote in his entire career.
> Read: FCA must investigate alternative long-stop ideas, says Zurich <
"The claim is from 1987, two years before I even met the guy," he claimed. "I have all my files stored at my house, we can't move for them, but you have to keep them in case of things like this."
He added: "This is the most important issue in financial services. How many IFAs are coming up to retirement? We still have to pay out for professional indemnity insurance. Mine is coming out of my savings. I think 15 years is long enough.
"They [the FOS and regulator] are not operating on a level playing field and that is dangerous."
Mathers also criticised the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) for being too quick to process claims and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for treating IFAs with contempt over the long-stop issue.
> Read: Adviser claims victory in FCA long-stop battle <
He urged all IFAs to contact their MP and back the current online petitions on the issue to make the regulator take a more "common sense" approach to the long-stop issue.
The FOS said in a statement: "The Ombudsman is governed by complaint handling rules set out by the regulator of financial services. These rules are referred to as the 'DISP' rules and include time limits for dealing with complaints. Not only must the rules be followed by any business being complained about they also have an effect on the length of time a consumer has to raise a complaint."
The FCA has previously said it will "consider the case for a 15-year time limit on complaints to the Financial Ombudsman Service to review whether the current arrangements are delivering the best outcomes for consumers overall".
