Assetz Capital and FOS

The verdict states that I should be put as close as possible to the position I would have been had their fees not been introduced. Therefore, they've been asked to refund me all their unfair lender fees and ensure that no further fees are charged. Plus to pay me 8% p.a. interest on the fee amounts they've charged me.

However, I've been in this position before with the FOS and other culprits. I very much doubt AC will pay me because they are using every trick possible to drag the case out by appealing etc. and will eventually put themselves in administration so they don't have to pay me or anyone else.

oliveau A mere 2 days later I've received an emailed letter setting out the case officer's findings (which are similar to those reported by p2pfan).  I'm guessing you'd already had one of these when you posted?

The letter is plainly based on a lot more than 2 days work.  It seems there has been a team working on this, and now they are working through the list of complainants, sending out letters for each one.

No doubt AC will push back...

Be interesting to see how things progress and what the final decision is if AC take it all the way.

For the old wind turbine loan complaints AC wrote this:

".... we would seek to remedy the situation for that customer and for any others in the same circumstances, whether those others had complained to us or not. We can confirm that we have already received a complaint and so the above process has already started"

Indeed, but I wasn't actually going to publicise the case officer's findings until AC do the decent thing. But the case officer has done good job and I think AC will struggle to refute his findings [other than doing a BLN and going into administration.] If they do 'I ain't bovvered' as it may help to clean up the p2p business.

Would they really risk tarnishing the Assetz brand by appealing and then having the case listed on the FOS? Also if they end up liquidating then which institutional investor would ever want to consider using assetz in the future?

If AC are to be taken at their word, they need all these fees etc just to keep the wheels turning.

Remove the fees - and compound that by ordering a repayment of existing fees gathered - and (again, if taken at their word) AC simply wouldn't be financially viable and would have an obligation to call in the Administrators.

As for whether the insti's would find it objectionable, they probably would note it somewhere on a a risk assessment but as part of portfolio of investments, one (now loosely) connected company going into administration / liquidation would unlikely make a material difference.  There might even be an argument that knowing when to call it a day on a terminally ill 'patient' demonstrates strength.

What might be abhorrent behaviour to the average (wo)man on the street could otherwise be considered sound business acumen when viewed through the lens of high-finance.  


Then there's this to consider...


A couple of weeks ago, a former employee of AC wrote this:

(That's a snippet - defo worth reading the post(s) in full)

If Chris' info / musings are correct - what have AC got to lose?


As an aside ...

I wonder what the FOS would do if AC appealed stating, 'if you insist we make the complainant whole, you (the FOS) would have to make similar adjudications to any other complainants and we (AC) would end up having to make all complainants and possibly even all lenders whole*. We can demonstrate that it would bankrupt us and we would be forced to call in the Administrators resulting in nobody being made whole.'  -- maybe that 'nobody' would be very few but the end result would (according to AC's argument) be the same.

(*there is precedent - see p2pindependentforum.com/post/292936/thread  - on those loans, all lenders were made whole, iirc)


Lastly ...

As I understand it AC has already appealed the FOS decision - see: 'However, AC have challenged the FOS's decision';  it would seem a publishable 'Final Decision' is unavoidable. Unless AC pulls back from its' appeal and, assuming everything is as stated, I don't think they would. I don't see they'd have much to lose and, potentially, an awful lot to gain.

I've had a scan through the various turbine threads but can't find any reference to the FOS - maybe I didn't look hard enough, maybe the discussion was verbal or maybe I imagined it, but I'm pretty darn sure there were complaints logged with the FOS once AC rejected direct complaints.

IIRC, as with this current situation, the FOS found in favour of the complainant and AC appealed. Once AC became aware the FOS were going to reject their appeal, they withdrew (hence my 'unless AC pulls back from its appeal' comment earlier) and the 'Final Decision' wasn't published with AC instead choosing to publicly play the knight in shining armour.  So, if I'm right, the spectre of an external decision had been looming large.

All this was right at the beginning of my exposure to AC; I had no direct involvement but was rather an interested bystander, so I might be mis-remembering or misinterpreting the snippets of info that were available at the time.

Perhaps those with direct knowledge could put the record straight.