The FCA’s revision team looked into 24% more pension scam cases in 2020, than what was reviewed in 2019.

Almost £70 million was handed back to clients in redress after complaints against firms where logged and reviewed by the regulator.

City Wire outlines that the FCA have ran many campaigns to try and combat pension and investment scam awareness; in order to prevent future increases of scams occurring.

According to the FCA, Over 1 million people have visited its ScamSmart website since it launched in 2014, while 110,000 viewed it last year.

The specialist team reviewing the pension scam cases at the FCA, look at scams that involve pension liberation and pension transfers or where they suspect unsuitable advice has led to a consumer ending up in investments; that are clearly not suitable for them.

The FCA outlines that over 9,000 calls per month in 2020 where received with over 5% relating to pension scams. With approximately 9,000 enquiries per month, over 9% relating to investment scams and over 5% pensions.

Although the FCA said pensions and investment scam numbers were ‘relatively low’ compared with other areas it enforces, it said that between 1 January and 31 October last year it received 2.7 complaints per 1,000 products in investments and 2.8 complaints per 1,000 products for decumulation & pensions.

In total, the regulator received 131,471 investment complaints for 49 million client accounts, and 114,062 decumulation and pension complaints against 41 million pension plans between January and October last year.