Legal and protection: how we protect your money

Bestinvest by Evelyn Partners is a trading name of Evelyn Partners Investment Management Services Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the FCA under the reference number 165169.

The FCA is based at 12 Endeavour Square, London E20 1JN. More information on this can be found on the register, in our Online Investment Service Terms of Business, or by visiting the FCA website here. 

SEI Investments (Europe) Limited is authorised and regulated by the FCA under the reference number 191713. SEI provides the following services: 

• holding all Customer Assets or arranging for them to be held in safe custody
• collecting all distributions and other entitlements arising on Customer Assets and accounting for them to the Customer
• settling transactions to acquire or dispose of Customer Assets on the instructions of the Intermediary (Bestinvest) and using funds provided for the purpose by the Customer
• informing the Customer or Intermediary of corporate actions and other events affecting Customer Assets
• holding money on behalf of the Customer where required for the purpose of providing the above services
• transferring all Customer Assets and money held on behalf of the Customer to the Customer, or as they or the Intermediary may direct, on termination of the appointment.

More information about how SEI keeps your assets safe can be found here.

EBS Pensions Limited (registered in England No. 00998606) (“EBS”) is the Scheme Administrator for the BestSIPP. EBS is authorised and regulated by the FCA under the reference number 134908. The Scheme Trustee is Embark Pensions Trustees Limited (registered in England No.06300217) (“Embark”).

The Scheme Trustee acts a bare trustee in relation to the Scheme. All monies received by the Scheme on your behalf will be applied to your SIPP for your benefit alone. Any client money which is not due and payable to EBS will be segregated in a client money bank account, in accordance with the FCA rules, thereby ensuring it is segregated from EBS’s own money.

Yes, Bestinvest is a trading name of Evelyn Partners Investment Management Services Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) of the United Kingdom. The FCA is based at 12 Endeavour Square, London E20 1JN. More information on this can be found on the register, in our Online Investment Service Terms of Business, or by visiting the FCA website here.

Bestinvest does not hold client money. Your assets are held in nominee by our custodian, SEI, in a ‘nominee company’, and are ring-fenced from SEI’s assets in accordance with the FCA rules.

SEI holds your cash in ‘client money’ bank accounts, which are established with statutory trust status. This means that money held within these accounts is recognised by the bank as belonging to a client rather than SEI itself. In this way SEI holds your money as a trustee.

More information can be found in our Terms of Business available through our website.

Each insolvency is different and likely to depend on the exact circumstances of the entity in question and its assets at the point of its failure.

In the unlikely event of our insolvency, an external administrator would be appointed, who would be expected to liaise with both the FCA and FSCS to ensure your assets are transferred to a new provider as quickly and efficiently as possible. Evelyn Partners Group, of which Bestinvest is a part, has personal indemnity (PI) insurance of £25 million to protect against its going insolvent. This protection is reviewed on an annual basis by the group’s Legal team and Chief Financial Officer, and also externally by our brokers.

Since Bestinvest does not hold client money, SEI holds your assets in a ‘nominee company’, ring-fencing them from SEI’s assets in accordance with the FCA rules.

If SEI was to become insolvent or cease trading, your assets (investments) are protected as they are ring-fenced from the rest of SEI’s assets and liabilities. There is no upper limit as all client assets, regardless of value, are afforded the same level of protection.

The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) pays compensation for financial loss to customers of authorised financial services firms.

Should you be entitled to compensation from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, you may be able to recover up to £85,000.

SEI uses a number of partner banks and FSCS covers £85k per person per failing bank. Since SEI never holds more than 50% of your cash with one bank, in the unlikely event of multiple bank failures your cash could therefore be covered by multiples of the £85k FSCS cover. This depends on how the cash is spread across different partner banks and whether you have other money invested with them outside of our Bestinvest accounts.

It may also protect certain qualifying temporary high balances of up to £1 million for six months from when the amount was first deposited. Life events causing a temporary high balance which the FSCS may protect, include property transactions, benefits payable on retirement, inheritance and divorce settlements.

If you require further information about compensation arrangements please contact the Financial Services Compensation Scheme on 0800 678 1100 or at 10th Floor, Beaufort House, 15 St Botolph Street, London, EC3A 7QU.

Bestinvest is committed to dealing with complaints effectively and fairly in accordance with the Financial Conduct Authority's complaint handling rules and guidance. If our clients have cause to complain, it will be dealt with by a dedicated team focused on ensuring that clients are treated fairly during the process. Please see our complaints handling procedure for more detail.

If our clients are not satisfied with the outcome of their complaint, they will have the right to refer it to the Financial Ombudsman Service, free of charge, at The Financial Ombudsman Service Exchange Tower, London E14 9SR, or by going to their website www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk.

In the course of business, circumstances may arise whereby the interests of a client conflict with the interests of the firm, members of staff or the interests of another client. At Evelyn Partners, our overriding principle is that employees must always place clients’ interests first, before their own and those of Evelyn Partners or Evelyn Partners directors and employees.

Maintaining integrity, exercising good judgement and discretion are fundamental to support Evelyn Partners’ ability to demonstrate good governance and risk management over situations of conflict. Such situations may arise in the course of employee dealing, where Evelyn Partners’ employees undertake deals on their own behalf, or where our employees may give or receive hospitality from clients in the course of conducting business: Evelyn Partners has internal policies and processes in place to manage such situations. Investment advice and order execution services that are undertaken on behalf of our clients are also subject to policies and processes, ensuring suitability and best execution.

Evelyn Partners is committed to the fair treatment of all our clients.

When a Conflict of Interest has been identified, it must be reported to Risk and Compliance, who will provide guidance in terms of what actions are required to mitigate or manage the conflict and who will then record the conflict and how it has been addressed in the centralised register.

The Executive Committee supports Risk and Compliance in the oversight and management of Conflicts of Interest, specifically to receive and review the Conflicts of Interest register on a periodic basis, at least annually, and to review the nature and number of conflicts identified in order to consider any additional controls that should be put in place to ensure that clients’ interests continue to be put first.

There are multiple layers of controls in place to ensure clients are protected from internal and external fraud. You may be asked security questions by our staff at any time for example. Our fraud controls are reviewed and updated regularly to counter potential new threats.

For further information regarding how we protect you and your data, please refer to Keeping you safe.