Investors with OMI beware; declining customer service is often the pre-cursor to deeper, more fundamental organisational difficulties within an organisation. And organisational difficulties can result in losses for investors.
Several months ago OMI decided to sell shares in a Collective Investment bond without the authority of the bond holder. Unprofessional you may say and as I was that bond holder, I was inclined to agree. But everyone makes mistakes and I’m usually a forgiving kind of person so I was prepared to let it ride if they simply reversed the trade. Then I was told by a singularly unhelpful dealing administrator that they would not be able to reverse the transaction – so basically ‘tough’. After several months without any kind of apology, countless email exchanges, and an official complaint to the Isle of Man Financial Ombudsman, OMI did reverse the transaction, awarded £200 compensation and issued a formal apology.
A ‘one off’ incident? I had hoped so but fast forward a few months and they did the same thing again. Yet again they sold my shares without any authority and yet again delays of months and countless email exchanges ensued.
What did OMI have to say about this?
“I am disappointed with the level of service provided, and would like to work with you to make sure we conclude this matter to the satisfaction of Mr Lihou.”
“I can appreciate that this matter will have caused Mr Lihou further inconvenience and I would like to apologise for this.”
Having sold shares without my authority on two occasions, I took it upon myself to scrutinise the charges and transactions on my investment with them over the years. Not only had they failed to gain my authority on these trades, they had taken unauthorised charges on at least three occasions. To add insult to injury, they had charged me for their unauthorised trades!
None of this would have come to light if I hadn’t waded through their years of incomprehensible quarterly reports which are clearly designed for their own internal accounting purposes rather than the benefit of their customers (yes, ‘customers’ – ‘clients’ would infer a far more professional relationship). They hadn’t found these errors, they hadn’t notified me, if I hadn’t discovered them they would have been left to stand and I would be out-of-pocket.
Needless to say I complained and whilst they acknowledged their errors there was no further apology (not that the one given above was convincing) and no hint of remorse over their repeated unprofessional action. They have promised to reimburse me for their over-charging and they offered £200 compensation – which I have declined because I think the Financial Ombudsman needs a record of how OMI are still behaving and you, the unsuspecting investment public, need to be aware of the risks of investing with OMI.
When a firm is repeatedly unable to respond to complaints within the statutory 8 weeks period, it tells you something about the number of complaints they are receiving!