20 August 2008

Anger over Reinstatement of Spendley License

When Gary le Vatte approached Rob Spendley of Rosspen Financial Services about an insurance policy in 2005, he was shocked to find that he had been sold the wrong insurance. To add insult to injury, Spendley billed le Vatte for the policy when he rejected it and then - the icing on the cake - took judgment against him when he refused to pay.

FSB reinstates Rosspen's licence
Spendley back in business after ex-employee admits to committing fraud, resulting in FSB overturning his company's suspension.

Le Vatte wasn't going to be bullied into paying for something he didn't purchase and took the matter to the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Ombudsman, Charles Pillai.

Pillai naturally saw the problem right away and accused Spendley of being "hell bent on selling policies whether there was a need or not." Spendley was also accused of incompetence and 'cavalier behavior'.

As a result of these findings, the Financial Services Board withdrew Spendley's license.

While waiting for the appeal process against this decision, an ex-Rosspen employee came forward and admitted that she had committed fraud at the company. While she did not specifically remember committing fraud in le Vatte's case, she said that she had most probably done so because it had been done on numerous previous occasions.

As a result, Rob Spendley had his license reinstated by the Board.

This decision has evoked anger by Gary le Vatte. "It's a joke!" he said. "He sold us the wrong policy and then sent us a bill for R5000 for two hours work. Where did he get all our details from without a signed bankers note? And as for this lady (the ex-employee), the onus falls on him (Spendley). As far as I'm concerned, if that's the way he runs his business, good luck to people who deal with him. If that's the way the ombudsman is looking after the clients then I want nothing to do with their policies. This is just a joke. I don't want to get involved anymore."

There is 1 comment

08 March 2011

Actually, Le Vatte was charged for the financial advice he recieved and followed. The terms of that advice were that there was an hourly fee payable which, if he went ahead with the advice to the point that I would earn commission from the sale of a policy, the hourly fees would be discounted against the commission, thereby costing him nothing.Le Vatte took the advice, but then proceeded to buy a policy through a mate of his, which was absolutely fine and his perogative however, in terms of teh way we operated, the fees for teh advice then became payable and we invoiced him. He then refused to pay this invoice which is when our credit department sued him for the outstanding fees.Yes, as we suspected, a member of staff had photocopied Le Vatte`s signature onto a `brokers note` which allowed us to draw information on his existing policies in order to give him teh advice he sought (which incidentally he never complained about or objected to and indeed he actually followed this advice) and this was wrong and against all company policy. What teh article fails to mention also is that this staff member had actually been caught photocopying signatures (she was just being lazy, rather than faxing the note to the client for them to sign)and had been dismissed for teh transgression, before Le Vatte actually submitted his complaint to teh Ombud. The Ombus was informed of this but chose to ignore the information stating that it couldn`t be true as she would not benefit. Wrong Mr Pillai! The girl herself admitted to what she had been accused of doing and fired from teh company for, before anyone believed her. In the meantime my business had been closed down.Apart from firing a person for this type of transgression, what could we be expected to do? I`m really not sure.

Posted by: Rob Spendley at 08:19

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Gary le Vatte angered by decision

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