I would strongly recommend anyone choosing a SIPP provider looks through the reviews here, because I can see many others have had all the same sorts of problems we have had with James Hay – a lazy and incompetent company that seem to take full advantage of the difficulties any customers will have in moving to another provider. Even the Chief Executive, Richard Rowney cannot be bothered to get his staff to respond to complaints.
We chose a SIPP to purchase commercial property for our pension income with a different company that were good, then unfortunately for us, James Hay purchased this company. We kept a large sum of money in cash to purchase an industrial unit, but James Hay made us jump through so many hoops before they would even instruct a solicitor (including insisting on surveys and a valuation) that the vendor lost confidence and sold to someone else. Even when James Hay finally had instructed the solicitor - the instruction was to pay three times the sum agreed to purchase the building! The result is we lost £6,000 in costs and James Hay did not bother to even reply to our complaint in the statutory 8 weeks.
Reviewed on: 9th February 2022
