Insurer’s material was misleading

According to a lawyer that works in the area of financial services, information that was provided by insurance giant Standard Life was misleading, and the lawyer has said that the insurance company needs to look at its material and determine whether compensation needs to be paid out over the matter.

The material related to its Pensions Sterling Fund. The fund was revalued just prior to Christmas, and the insurance company has already agreed to compensate people that invested after this time. However, it also said that the material clearly showed that funds had been invested in “a range of short dated money market instruments.”

The lawyer said: “There’s a description of the asset type as being 100% in cash, which in the small print says could indicate some short term money market instruments. Mortgage backed securities tend to be over quite a long term so that’s wrong. The documents are not clear, not fair and definitely misleading.”

He added: “The Financial Services Authority should be sitting down with Standard Life and going through documentation for each year and deciding whether their descriptions of the fund pass the clear, fair and not misleading test. In reality that may mean compensating everybody.”