Troubled self-invested personal pension provider GPC Sipp has received six claims from creditors totalling £731,667 to date, with more expected over the coming months.
A report by administrators Smith and Williamson, filed with Companies House today (January 15), showed that GPC Sipp owed £1.2m to unsecured creditors, which included HM Revenue & Customs, employees and customers.
Six of these have already submitted claims but they have not been identified by the administrators.
There are also significant claims expected to come from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme and other clients of GPC Sipp which have not yet been counted for.
In the report the administrators explained payment to unsecured creditors is dependent on attaining debts owed to GPC Sipp and the potential sale of the client database, both of which are uncertain.
The report said: “There may also be recoveries in relation to potential claims as a result of the ongoing investigation work which may increase the dividend prospect for unsecured creditors.
“If there are no further realisations it is not anticipated that there will be funds available to enable a dividend to be paid to the unsecured creditors.
“We have not undertaken any work on agreeing creditor claims to date.”
The company’s book debts are valued at £2.4m with £56,849 having been collected to date.
These debts mainly relate to outstanding administration fees, due to clients not having enough funds within their Sipps.
The administrators are currently in talks with several solicitors acting for more than 500 clients to reach a settlement in relation to any debts owed by these clients.
GPC Sipp, formerly known as Guardian Pension Consultants, entered administration in June 2019 due to problems with the investments in its Sipps - several of which failed, such as Harlequin Properties, a £400m project involving a luxury hotel development that was largely never built.
The Sipp and Ssas books were then bought by Hartley Pensions Limited in August 2019 for £482,000.
Up until June 2019, the FSCS had paid £95m in compensation to clients who held unregulated assets in a Sipp with GPC.
The lifeboat had paid out on 2,206 claims, most of which were brought between 2014 and 2019 but a handful date back to as far as 2004.
These claims were brought against the IFAs who had advised the clients to transfer their pensions to GPC and then invest in high risk assets that later failed.
GPC Sipp was embroiled in further controversy when its latest accounts revealed that Kathryn Taylor, the only director at the firm, had £1m transferred to her directors loan account in the form of a "dividend", a mere seven months before the company entered administration.
Directors who were present at the time the company went into administration or immediately after have been reported to the State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in line with the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986.
amy.austin@ft.com
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