The Financial Services Compensation Scheme has agreed to pay out £44.35mn on claims against troubled self-invested personal pensions provider Lifetime Sipp, with thousands more claims expected.
According to the latest liquidator’s report, published on Companies House this week (June 7), as of March 2022 the FSCS had agreed claims totalling £44.35mn from 908 creditors, of which £29.1mn has been paid to consumers.
The FSCS is also processing claims from a further 149 creditors, however no value has been put on these claims yet, and thousands more are yet to file a claim. The liquidators said the process could take another two years to complete.
As of June 8, FTAdviser understands the FSCS has received a total of 1,203 claims against the Lifetime SIPP Company.
However, according to the liquidators report, the “majority” of creditors are yet to either submit claims to the FSCS, or complete the process of evidencing their claim to allow them to receive compensation.
They are expecting to receive claims from 3,237 creditors.
Due to this the liquidators said it was difficult to determine how long this process may still take.
They said: “Based on current progress, it is not unreasonable to assume a further two years.”
Lifetime Sipp appointed administrators Kingston Smith & Partners, now known as Moore Kingston Smith & Partners, at the end of March 2018 after receiving claims from unhappy investors.
At the time of administration, lawyers representing claimants warned the FSCS could be hit with as much as £3.5mn in claims related to Lifetime Sipp's Harlequin Property assets alone.
The firm went into liquidation on April 2, 2019 and was declared in default by the FSCS on June 13, 2019.
FTAdviser learned the troubled Sipp firm had started to transfer 40 per cent of its Sipp book to Hartley Pensions in January 2018, ahead of going into administration.
