Last edited Sat Mar 9, 2019, 08:26 AM - Edit history (1)
The scheme looks largely like a way to take 25% of the marks' money in "marketing commission". After that, they invested what was left in high-risk loans in the vague hope they'd get back enough money to pay the 'interest', and then claim there was a capital loss that their small print allowed for. None of which I think would have stood up to proper accountancy examination.
A spokesman for Surge Financial said: "Surge has a number of clients and its fees for LCF are in line with the industry standard.
That sounds like bollocks to me. You can't take 25% from a 3 year investment (let alone a 1 year one) and stand a realistic chance of it making good money. There's certainly no way you can call it 'standard'.
I've found a couple of moneysavingexpert forums posts on this company from the last 3 years - with the phrase "don't touch with a bargepole" coming up more than once.
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5346049
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?p=71665855
The collective wisdom of that forum seemed to work pretty well - people questioning why a scheme with no guarantee, and which could lose all your capital, was being marketed as if it was a regular interest-paying ISA. And they found that it had a sponsored listing on "
https://www.best-savings-rate.co.uk/" - which is run by "RPDigitalServices Ltd", now owned by our friend Paul Careless:
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09709854/filing-history - though one Ronak Patel was the owner in 2016. They also own "best-investment-rates.co.uk" and "top-isa-rates.co.uk". And look at this:
Until the FCA shut down London Capital and Finance, one of its most important promoters was RPDigitalservices, the company behind the top-isa-rates.co.uk and best-savings-rates.co.uk websites.
...
RPDigitalservices is not authorised by the FCA to issue financial promotions to the public.
RPDigitalservices was one of the most important sources of investment for London Capital & Finance. At the time they were promoting LCF, analytics data from Alexa showed that half of visitors to LCF’s websites had previously visited RPDigitalservices.
...
After London Capital & Finance was shut down by the FCA, RPDigitalservices switched to promoting Blackmore Bond.
https://bondreview.co.uk/2019/02/26/rpdigitalservices-former-chief-promoter-of-london-capital-finance-stops-promoting-unregulated-investments/All highly dodgy.
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