An Excellent Example of Bureaucratic Capriciousness.

The retail FS business I co-own has one guiding principle.  That is when considering anything the question we ask ourselves is 'is this right for the client?'.

Now, clearly as we are all different some things clients want to do we wouldn't want to do.  But, it is not our money or our lives and all our individual motivations are personal.  It is not anyone's job to tell someone else what to do, unless specifically asked to do so, and even then - without coercion - you can only 'advise'.  Only the state can coerce.

We have recently been working with a number of clients who want, by their own choice and based on their own research and understanding, to invest in an unlisted security through their pension funds.  To be clear, we have not 'sold' the investment opportunity to them in any way at all.  All we have been asked to do is to facilitate the administration of the purchase.  Even then, just because we are Good Chaps we have done a considerable amount of due diligence on the investment opportunity, which FYI is not some mad stupid Bahamian property thingy, or whatever, but a simple capital raising for a straightforward clicks and bricks business.

Mostly this means transferring clients' money from pension manager X to a SIPP manager.  This has proved mighty frustration and difficult because, in part, of this piece of abject nonsense and appalling statist nannying from the Financial Catastrophe Authority. At some point I will set out and fisk the bloody thing, but I have to do some money earning work today.  If anybody else fancies a go at it, be my guest.

Clearly some people are persuaded to place pensions funds into what are completely unbelievable 'investments' that any sane person would just laugh at.  But why do they do this?  Well, if you run society as a kindergarten you get juvenile behaviour. The 'it's always someone else's fault' culture creates massive moral hazard and people just disengage their brains. The FCA's lunacy precipitates the failures that they rail against.

Facepalm.