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Review of the James Hay Partnership, Financial Advisers:

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Consistently slow and incompetent service costing £1,990.80 per annum

I bought my first commercial investment property in 2002 using a SIPP. I used Union pension Trustees as my SIPP provider. They were taken over subsequently by James Hay Partnership. Thankfully I have no other properties with them. Since then, fees have risen and service is poor. To give some recent examples: I used their "secure messaging system" to instruct them on 12th August 2020 to pay my buildings insurance. I got a call today 28th September, nearly seven weeks later from my brokers advising that their bill had not been paid. I also used the same system on 13th August to send them forms instructing them to invest a significant sum in a two year bond. This still has not been completed. These are just the most recent issues. Their service is consistently poor. They send paper invoices for my SIPP fees to my tenants instead of to me, they seldom respond to messages in their so called "secure messaging system" which it would appear is so secure that even James Hay themselves can't use it. To be even vaguely confident of anything at all happening you have to call them. I am actually typing this review after being on hold now for over an hour. Once you get through the staff are professional. It is a shame that their management and systems are so appalling that the company as a whole is one that everybody should avoid like the plague. The "online portal" is not useful. I would love to use it to invest the cash in my SIPP but I am advised that because I am a former Union Pensions Trustees investor, I do not have access to these features. The solution is to set up a SIPP with a separate organisation (I'm using Interactive Investor) and then move money out of James Hay into it so that you can invest using a properly set up system. I would change provider, but moving a property from one SIPP to another is very expensive, so to all practical intents and purposes I am stuck with James Hay. I think that my only option is gradually to build a portfolio of evidence and then approach the regulator or TV's Watchdog. Back to the hold music - now one hour and nine minutes after starting and they have terminated the call without answering. Steer well clear of this dysfunctional body of time-wasters. Reviewed on: 28th September 2020

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