Firm fined £50,000 over its illegal cold calls on pensions

A COMPANY that made illegal sales calls to people about their pension savings has been fined £50,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office for breaching a ban which came into force in 2019.

Parkin Beacher

Limited, which also calls itself Your

Pension Options, made cold calls offering to review pension plans by arranging an introduction to an adviser.

Andy Curry, head of investigations at the ICO, said: ‘Cold calls are a common way of attempting to defraud people out of their pensions, and we will take tough action where we find companies carrying out this kind of marketing.’

The Halifax-based company is run by Ashley Parkin-Beacher, pictured, and last April I warned that another of his companies,

Your Options Limited, was claiming to be run by experts specialising in financial services.

In fact, they were salesmen marketing the high risk Choices Bond which promised to pay 7 per cent interest, while failing to spell out possible losses. Parkin-Beacher reassured investors, saying: ‘Northern Provident Investments will oversee any investments throughout their duration.’

But by August, NPI itself was on the brink of collapse, and on September 4 it fell into liquidation. Last May, a month after The Mail on Sunday’s warning, the Financial Conduct Authority added Your Options to its own warning list of unauthorised financial businesses.