EQ Investors Limited · DRN-6159232

The complaint Mr S has complained that EQ Investors Limited (EQ) delayed the production of a recommendation report about his financial investment strategy. It also gave him incorrect information about the time it would take to act upon his investment instructions at a time of market volatility leading to a loss of capital. He would like to be compensated for this loss. What happened I have reviewed all the evidence provided by both parties. I have not reproduced all of this in this decision but concentrated on what I believe to be the most relevant parts. Mr S became a customer of EQ in July 2021, transferring his pension assets from a previous provider. He explained to EQ at the time that although he wished his investments to be made with a 20 year time horizon, he would need to begin to take income from his funds in 2025. On 17 March 2025, Mr S contacted EQ to ask to speak to an adviser about his investments. He noted that his investments had not achieved any growth in the preceding three and a half years and wanted to understand what EQ’s recommendations would be going forward. He proactively indicated that he wanted to discuss moving some of his assets into Gilts or moving a significant amount into cash to guard against market volatility. Mr S spoke to EQ the following day, 18 March 2025. During this meeting he expressed his dissatisfaction with the performance of his investments since he had been a customer of EQ, but the main purpose of the meeting was to discuss ways in which he could begin to take regular income from his pension and reduce the fees he was paying to help offset the poor investment performance he had experienced. He was also concerned about the prospect of market volatility caused primarily by political developments in the United States. EQ undertook to produce a report for Mr S, outlining his main options and its investment recommendations. Mr S contacted EQ on 2 April to ask when he could expect to receive the report. In his email, he said: “I’m nervous about the state of the markets at the moment although, surprisingly, the fund seems to have only dropped 0.37% since we talked on the 18th March. If we’re going to sell 30% of my holding I’d like to be in a position to that quickly if whatever Trump announces today hits equities hard. Whatever he announces, now doesn’t feel like the time to be passive.” EQ sent the report to Mr S at 5.45pm that same day. Mr S reviewed the contents of the report on 3 April 2025, before a number of communications took place on 4 April 2025. These included:

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• Telephone call from Mr S to EQ at 3.31pm. The call was not answered, but Mr S left a voicemail message in which he instructed EQ to immediately sell all of his investments to cash on 4 April 2025. • Telephone call from EQ to Mr S at 3.38pm to discuss his options. During this call EQ proposed selling around a third of the assets into cash, as suggested in the report. Mr S suggested that all equities should be sold and only funds held in bonds be retained. • Telephone call from EQ to Mr S at 3.46pm in which EQ confirmed that while it would be possible to sell all equities and retain bonds, he was also informed that market volatility could affect bond holdings. After considering this, Mr S confirmed his instruction to EQ to sell all his investments into cash. • Email from EQ to Mr S at 4.05pm to confirm it had instructed the sales accordingly. • Mr S called EQ once again at 4.35pm to confirm that “sold meant executed”. Mr S and EQ have differing recollections of the response he was given. Mr S emailed EQ again on 9 April 2025 to query why not all his holdings had been sold and why the prices for the assets that had been sold were based upon prices on 7 and 8 April 2025, rather than 4 April 2025. EQ replied on 10 April 2025 to explain that: To confirm all sales were sent through on Friday however they won’t have been placed until Monday due to market cut off times. Funds trade on various settlement dates for example T+2 (trade date plus 2 working days) meaning if the trade was placed on Monday, the cash settlement date would be Wednesday. Mr S replied to this email on 14 April 2025 to articulate his unhappiness with his experience with EQ, citing poor investment performance and dissatisfaction with the fees he had paid since joining. He also raised the fact that he had to ‘chase’ the production of the report and that he felt he had made a significant loss as a result of its delay, compounded by a further loss as his subsequent instructions were made too late to be executed the day they were given, although he had been given the impression that they had been. EQ responded to this email on 15 April 2025. It said that the typical turnaround time for a client report was 5-10 working days and that the report was a regulatory requirement, so it had no choice but to produce it. It also explained that: “unlike listed equities, mutual funds and OEICs are subject to cut-off times and are not traded in real-time. Most are priced at midday and can also have a 11 a.m. cut-off imposed for same day dealing. However, as we discussed, some funds operate on different schedules and may not be priced until the following day, depending on the underlying markets they invest in.” Mr S wrote again to EQ to make a complaint on 29 April 2025. In his complaint, he said: “to delay the report till two days before the 4th, when everybody knew Trump was making his announcement, was positively negligent. There was no time to complete the sales even if I had reacted instantly. You placed the sales on the 4th when you all seemed to know that there was no chance that they would go through. I agree that I requested the sale on the 4th but nobody warned me that it was impossible.

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The result was that my investments were sold at the bottom of the market. That led directly to significant extra losses on top of the disastrous performance of the fund since October 2021.” EQ responded to Mr S’s complaint on 23 June 2025, rejecting it on all grounds. Unhappy with this response, Mr S brought his complaint to this service. Our Investigator reviewed all the evidence in this case and formed the view that the complaint should not be upheld. Mr S remained unhappy and so the complaint has been passed to me to make a final decision. What I’ve decided – and why I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. And having done so, I have reached the same conclusion as our Investigator and do not uphold Mr S’s complaint. I can appreciate that Mr S will be disappointed with this, so I will explain now how I have reached my conclusions. Firstly, I think it’s important to reflect upon the role of this Service. Our role is to impartially review the circumstances of a complaint and make a decision on whether a business has made errors or treated a customer unfairly. Where it has, we expect a business to fairly compensate a customer for any financial loss and distress and inconvenience they have suffered as a result. In the circumstances of this case I need to determine two separate points – firstly whether the report from EQ to Mr S was unreasonably delayed and whether this led to Mr S not having enough time to act upon its contents to avoid the loss he suffered. And secondly, whether EQ gave Mr S incorrect information about the time it would take for his trades to be executed, causing him to suffer a financial loss. I’ll consider these points in order, starting with the time taken for the report to be produced after Mr S met with EQ on 18 March 2025. Having considered the timeline, I can see that the report (which is a requirement of the regulations enforced by Financial Conduct Authority) took 11 working days to produce, one day longer than EQ says is its service standard of 5-10 working days. While this is obviously outside the service standard, I think it is fair and reasonable to agree with EQ when it says that these reports can take longer at busy times, like the financial year end, as happened in the circumstances of this case. So, on balance, I don’t find that the report was either not required or significantly delayed in its publication. In addition, I note that Mr S believes that the report contained: “nothing of substance more than my email of the 18th had summarised.” Mr S was obviously concerned about receiving the report before taking any action, although I have to note that he already knew what its recommendations would be. Furthermore, when he did receive the report, he chose not to act on its recommendations but instead instructed EQ to sell all his assets into cash. I have to consider that if Mr S had become so concerned

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about potential market volatility between the meeting on 18 March 2025 and the receipt of the report that he considered a sale of all assets to be a viable option, he could have contacted EQ to discuss this or indeed issued instructions to that effect without waiting until he had received the report. In effect, during the period between the meeting and Mr S receiving the report, I do not believe Mr S needed to wait for the report to find out its contents, have further discussions with or to issue instructions to EQ. And as such, I do not find that any delay in Mr S receiving the report would have led directly to any losses he has suffered. I’ll turn now to consider the events of 4 April 2025 and the sale of Mr S’s pension assets into cash. The evidence surrounding the events of that afternoon are contradictory in places, so I have had to consider what I believe is most likely to have occurred on the balance of probabilities. There is no dispute that in a voicemail message, Mr S gave an instruction to EQ to sell all of his assets into cash. I have carefully considered whether Mr S should have expected that EQ should have simply actioned this request, rather than calling him to discuss it, but it acted correctly in this respect. After all, it provided Mr S with financial advice and his instructions ran counter to the recommendations it had made in the report it had sent him on 2 April 2025. Having established that I believe that EQ acted correctly here, the discussions during the telephone calls that took place are areas of dispute. EQ and Mr S have presented contradictory accounts of what was discussed during the calls. EQ has stated that it does not have any recordings of these calls, as the calls between the parties were made from a mobile phone held by EQ’s adviser, rather than a landline telephone line. This is obviously very regrettable. EQ has also now confirmed that rather than being a contemporaneous record of the conversation, the file note which outlines what it says was discussed with Mr S was produced on 13 May 2025, in response to Mr S’s complaint. It has also now confirmed that it holds no contemporaneous notes of the conversation and that the note provided was based upon the adviser’s recollection some five weeks after the event. Having said that, I appreciate that the events of the afternoon of 4 April 2025 were very fast moving and may have led to a misunderstanding between Mr S and EQ. I can see that if EQ had accurately informed Mr S about the timing of any sales that he instructed that day, that did not ensure that Mr S fully understood the situation. That Mr S did not understand the situation is illustrated by his email of 9 April 2025, in which he queries why he did not receive the sale prices for 4 April 2025, instead receiving prices based upon values of 7 and 8 April 2025. I find that this is compelling evidence that Mr S had clearly not understood the dealing process and the timescales involved. The evidence from EQ - unsupported by contemporaneous recordings or notes - says that he was clearly informed and understood the situation. Set against this is that I can see no reason why EQ would have deliberately set out to misinform Mr S. Even if I assume, however that EQ might not have adequately informed Mr S of the timescales involved in selling his assets into cash, I do not think this would alter the position he is in now.

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This is because I have to consider that what Mr S was asking EQ to do was essentially impossible. As EQ explained to Mr S in its email to him on 15 April 2025, mutual funds and OEICS are not traded in real time, unlike single equities. So, by the time that Mr S first left the voicemail for EQ at 3.31pm, instructing it to sell all his pension assets into cash, it was already too late for those transactions to be carried out before 7 April 2025 at the earliest, after both the weekend and the tariff announcements that Mr S was concerned about. The issue then becomes, essentially, whether I think that Mr S would have decided to continue with the sale of his assets to cash had he known this to be the case. Mr S has said in his evidence that he would not have instructed the sale, although I have to take into account that this may be influenced by subsequent events. When making my decision, I have to discount the benefit of hindsight, and make my decision based upon the facts of the complaint as they were known at the time. And having done so, I think, on balance, that Mr S would have continued with the sale. When reaching this conclusion I have taken into account that Mr S had already instructed EQ to immediately sell his all his assets to cash. This was against the advice it had given him on 18 March 2025 and confirmed in the report it sent him on 2 April 2025. In addition to this, I believe that Mr S’s motivation in instructing the sale was his concern about the market volatility that would likely occur after the implementation of tariffs on US imports was announced. I consider that he expected the value of his assets to decline both in the short term but also in the subsequent weeks. After all, if he expected the fall in value to be immediate but short lived, I would not have expected him to instruct the sale of all his assets if he was expecting their value to recover as quickly as they subsequently did. Consequently, I think it’s most likely that while Mr S would have been unhappy that the sales could not be carried out before the first announcement of the tariffs, he would have expected further falls in the value of his assets after that and to have instruct EQ to make the sales. Given this, while I can fully appreciate Mr S’s concerns about the role EQ played in the misunderstanding that occurred in terms of the timing of the sale (which I still do not make a formal ruling on), I do not see any reason why it should compensate him in the way he is seeking. My final decision For the reasons set out above, I do not uphold Mr S’s complaint. EQ Investors Limited need take no further action to resolve this complaint. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Mr S to accept or reject my decision before 13 May 2026. Bill Catchpole Ombudsman

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