Anthony William Morrin

Anthony William Morrin (formerly AWM Financial) was a financial adviser based in Newcastle. They became regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority in June 2005.

During their time as an adviser, they advised people to transfer their pensions. Unfortunately, their advice was not always up to scratch. It was found when the Financial Ombudsman looked into complaints against the firm, that when providing advice surrounding the transfer of defined benefit or final salary pensions, they did not provide their clients with enough information about the benefits they forfeited by transferring away from their “gold-plated” pension. This means that the advice was skewed towards the benefits of transferring as opposed to the benefits of remaining in the scheme, this is a clear breach of the FCA’s rules. Anthony William Morrin also advised some of their clients to transfer their pensions into a Qualifying Regulated Overseas Pension Scheme (QROPS). These pensions are suitable for people who are moving abroad and additional checks need to be made relating to dual taxation treaties between the UK and the country to which the person is moving. However, it has come to light that the majority of the clients advised transferring into such a scheme had no intentions of ever moving abroad. This advice is clearly unsuitable and, in addition to this, the investments that the firm recommended be held within the pension were high-risk products such as Dolphin Capital, High Street Boutique, and Storefirst. All of which have now failed and the investors have lost the majority, if not all, of their investment. Following all this, the firm had a number of decisions upheld against them which lead to them having to pay compensation to their clients. Anthony William Morrin gave up their authorisation in December 2016 and closed their do.