Legal action against Assetz Capital - No Win No Fee

Good questions.

1. How would that differ from waiting out from the complaint I raised with FOS directly?

Absolutely nothing wrong with doing it all yourself. I expect many will.

Depends on how good you think you are at knowing the legislation and understanding the implications of the AC terms and if you would like some help. Then how good you are at putting that in writing and what experience you have of what the FOS is typically looking for. It is a personal judgement call. Only you can decide if it is worth paying for professional help in some form and what you are willing to pay. I have no idea if this solicitor is worth it. The more people an action group could get to agree in principle to sign up, the better offer you would likely get if you shopped around.

2. If the FOS rule against Assetz, wouldn't they reward it to everyone who had raised a complaint against Assets?

No. The FOS has to deal with each complaint separately in law. They have no jurisdiction to do this automatically. In fact they have to be careful not to do this automatically.

Having said that if your complaint is the same, the FOS is very likely to rule in a similar way.

So it depends to some extent what your complaint is and how good you are at articulating it,as per point 1.

It also depends on AC, as they may decide to do the same or something similar for everyone.

Just remember many complaints via the FOS are settled before the final step in the FOS process so you never see the FOS ruling so you wouldn't know what was going on by looking at the FOS website.

Ultimately it is a personal choice. I am pretty confident in saying we would never have got compensation in the mini bond case without a proportion of investors working with legal support. It was simply too complex, even though the FOS say you can do it alone.

Exactly what help you get and how much it costs varies.

Honestly everyone should make a personal decision.

Of course these are good questions to ask. They will also help make clear what the solicitors are offering to do. I certainly asked lots of questions in the case i mentioned.

Looking at the FAQs on their website,they are not suggesting taking AC to any court or offer any representation in court or entering into any litigation. This is very common with these companies. All they are suggesting in the FAQs is making hopefully good representations to the FOS and perhaps FSCS just as any customer can do on their own without any 3rd party help. The FOS don't grant costs against someone complaining. Nor do the FSCS. The processes are meant to be free for anyone with or without representation. That is the whole point of the FOS and FSCS processes.

You may find examples of solicitors that go via the courts, i can't personally see the point in this case in terms of costs etc. but also in terms of the way the FOS makes its judgements using a "reasonable" judgement.

I have no idea if the suggested solicitors are any good, if it is worth pursuing rather than leave AC to just get on with it.

Another good question.

I was only quoting the FAQs. Of course the approach the solicitors take will vary case by case and a claim via the FSCS may be irrelevant.

You are correct the FSCS doesn't apply directly to p2p investments.

So i would be asking the solicitors about the FSCS and is there any relevance in this case. There may be none. I see it was mentioned in the very first post in this thread.

In the case i quoted, mini bonds are not covered by the FSCS. But a 3rd party regulated company conducted a regulating activity in signing off some misleading promotional material. The FSCS paid out due to this. I only use this as an example. I am not saying it applies in this case.

It is a good point and a question i would pose to the solicitors if i were thinking about taking up their offer.

What do they think about the risk and are there any mitigating actions they can take? This would give a good indication about how much thought they had given to their strategy overall.

AC may have some insurance, depending on the scale and number of complaints they may be able to cover it, they may have already assumed some complaints, they may be willing to fund some complaints etc. I honestly don't know.

I honestly don't know what the solicitors strategy is. In the mini bond case which was also unregulated, the route was to pursue a 3rd party who was regulated and carried out a regulated activity. This is just one example i am not saying it applies in this case. Hence a successful claim was first made via the FOS and then via the FSCS when the 3rd party was forced into administration.

Ultimately the horse has already bolted, many people have already put in complaints with or without various levels of legal support. So the risk is already very real even before this thread started.

Just wondering, 9 months on, if you've had more luck going through the legal route, compared to those of us who went directly to the FOS and are still waiting for an Ombudsman ruling?

So the fos route now seems closed and fos do not think an unfair terms case can be upheld in a court of law. I am not involved in the legal route, to be honest had no belief in it,the legal company involved or it being the best action to obtain the largest return of funds for the majority of lenders.However people have the right to pursue there own interests in their own way, I respect that.Now we will see how serious the solicitors are in their confidence of a no win no fee action without the support of fos and fos reading of the legal position.