This has kinda spilled over from another thread but I was wondering what sort of experience fellow expats have had from so called Cold Calling Financial Advisors whilst here. Was it?

All Good - Sound advice / investments?

or

Yeah It was kinda OK?

or

Actually when I found out the truth I wanted to kill somebody?

let's boil it down.

a stranger calls you.

asks you to transfer large sums of money to an offshore account (if you've ever dealth with these jurisdictions, you'd know that in the event of a dispute there is no chance for you to get your money back - so you're going to trust them completely)

all for the purposes of generating a 'good return'.

of course, it structured so that they take a huge slice whether the funds earn or not, so you better hope for the best.

You may be very interested in this article.



http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2...e-explanation/

If they're so good why are these freaks cold calling you on the phone in the middle of your rosti?

I've been in Zurich about a year and had an average experience, with, strangely enough the company mentioned on that link from Captcha.

I didn't feel there was any advice going on......but for sure some impressive selling. Which immediately switches me off.

Be very cautious. I took some advice from an IFA back in the UK I had been recommended to - he came up with some interesting stuff, none of it mentioned by the guys over here.

Agree.Unless you meet someone face to face, and are satisfied with their credentials/history DO NOT give them any money. There are people out there worldwide who will take your transfer, stash it on Pluto and hide behind the banking regulations of some criminal friendly country.

lol and I am quite sure any thing stuffed up poor old Pluto (as in the Disney Dog) would definitely get him whining and wanting to kill someone

I unfortunately missed this thread below which also touches the subject wonderfully:

Financial Mis-selling to expats

These people must successfully sell into people or they would not (still) exist. I just was hoping to share some people's experiences. BUT as the other thread mention names need to be 'witheld to obviously protect the guilty'

I posted these links for the OP of the thread that I think got deleted:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2007...ancialadvisors

http://www.whichoffshore.com/offshor...ancial-adviser

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/p...l-Adviser.html

It was moved to the scrapyard for being a duplicate of a multiple posting.


Doc.

No, I wasn't happy.

That's an excellent thread a good description of what I experienced and of the investment I was recommended. Luckily, I saw sense in time and was able to pull out within the (well-named) "cooling off" period.

I subsequently found this article, which also describes the same scenario: http://www.submityourarticle.com/art...riate-7681.php

Brilliant find Reb77Br.
I wonder how many people out there in CH have these policies and are still paying in hoping for a return?
The article makes it clear, the average paying in term is 7 years, not long enough to get your money back.

I'll ask again, has anyone, anywhere, ever seen one of these schemes through to the end and been happy with the result?
I won't hold my breath.

So what's the income bracket you need to get these calls? Clearly, I'm not in it.

I don't think there is one ... and I even get these calls, even though I'm Swiss!

I get at least one of these calls each month. They've clearly managed to get a copy of our internal phone directory, because you can often watch the phone call bounce around the office...

No they don't need the internal phone book.....It is simple to get hold of people's extension numbers and target the main person of interest. You just need to have no life at the weekend or evenings.....it goes like this.

Some poor sod needs to make appointments with some nice expats, so they stay behind at work after hours and call the main companies in the area knowing that no-one will be there to answer their calls. The calls then simply go through to voicemail, where the nice expat announces their name and asks them to leave a message, which they don't, they just make a note of the extension number they dialled and your name. The poor soul will sit there for hours dialing in different combinations of the base phone number with different extension numbers fishing for the expats numbers. Simple and effective.

Apparently, I cursed myself. I've received two cold calls this week.....at work.

They will also find one poor idiot who is prepared to talk to them at work. So they enter the building officially and legally with a visitor's pass and hold their sales pitch. But they will use their time in the building to glean further names off office doors etc, maybe usefully taking a wrong turning on the way back from the bathroom.

Linked-in is also a source of info for them... link to link to link... I looked at my profile recently and saw that I had been "viewed" by someone from a Basel investment fund. As this is completely outside my field, I can only think it was someone looking to bug me.

Ive been bombarded by Linked in contacts this week asking me to "be friends" Im not on Linkedin - is this a new policy for them?

I would check LinkedIn and see if someone has set up an account using your email. It happened to me recently!