According to new research conducted by Retirement Advantage, one in seven non-retired people over the age of 50-years-old were targeted in the first quarter of the year by scammers. This highlights why we need to be more diligent than ever before with pension misselling and scams.
The study involved more than 1,000 people.
Out of these people, 140 revealed that they had been approached by email, text, or phone in January, February, or March by someone offering them investment opportunities or free pension advice.
While a good number of those approached did ignore these unsolicited messages or put the telephone down, there are a number of people all over the world that fall victim to these scams and accept the false promise of ‘free’ pension advice.
Many of them feel it is probably the right thing to do in order to protect their future and their savings.
Have you ever heard of the saying ‘seems too good to be true’?
Well, that’s the case here. This free advice tends to come at a cost. At best, you will end up involved in a pension scheme that is poorly managed. At worst, you will fall victim to an outright scam, which could see all of your savings disappear.
You may think that you would never fall into such a trap, but the people on the other end of the phone are professional con artists who know how to be very convincing.
In one particular scam, the so-called ‘advisor’ convinces a client to transfer their savings into a scheme for their own benefit, when really the ‘advisor’ is the one who will make the money from the client’s savings.
While pension scams and mis-sold pensions are nothing new, it has become a lot easier for bad financial advisors and scammers to target individuals and their entire pension schemes.
The internet and shared information have made this much easier than ever before.
This stresses why it is so important to be cautious with your money – never give out personal details over the telephone and research all companies who contact you carefully.
This also highlights why we all have an obligation to help the older people in our family. Make sure they are educated about scams. You should inform them of the things scammers usually say and make sure that they know not to give out their personal details over the telephone.
It always helps if you make sure that any numbers that keep ringing your parents’ phones are blocked. It also helps to make sure your phone is tuned in with any hearing aid your elderly family member may where. You can get wireless hearing aids today, which are much more convenient for users.
We all need to make an effort to ensure that our parents and old family members are protected from scammers. The research shows that they are increasingly being targeted, so we need to make sure that our loved ones do not fall victim.
