How a bad investment decision has devastated my life

After fighting for years for her late husband's pension, which is held in an offshore property scheme, Elaine Jenkins feels mentally exhausted but more determined than ever to get the money back.

Jenkins' husband Steve died of a heart attack in August 2017 at the age of 59.

Five years earlier, in 2012, he had responded to a cold-call from an introducer who told him he could consolidate all his pensions into one £120,000 pot and put £76,500 in a "safe" investment, putting his retirement concerns at ease.

Advised by CIB Life & Pensions, now defunct, he bought a 50 per cent share in a premium hotel room in Cape Verde in 2013, believing this would yield enough for the pair's retirement while allowing them to pass the money to their children should anything happen to them.

But returns were not as he had hoped, primarily because large chunks of the rental proceeds of the room were taken away in fees. Returns amounted to about £450 a quarter once the resort was operational, with self-invested personal pension fees totalling about £900 a year.

"It was a shock and I still remember vividly the police knocking on the door one beautiful summer evening informing me Steve had had a heart attack whilst at work.  

"At that moment, I thought my life was over but with the help of my family and friends I managed to start to put my life together again.  

"I thought financially I would be fine; I’d sell the apartment Steve had invested his pensions in and I’d downsize. I was still working, so I would be fine."

Jenkins notified The Resort Group, the Cape Verde-based property scheme, of Steve's passing in September that year and was initially told by TRG in an email, seen by FTAdviser, that she would receive a refund of 85 per cent of the sum invested within six months.

This was the full amount minus a 15 per cent fee for the cost of sale, and meant Jenkins would have received £65,000 by March 2018. 

But in April 2018 Rowanmoor, Jenkins' Sipp provider which acted as the trustee of the pension, informed Jenkins in an email, also seen by FTAdviser, that her refund would depend on the resale of the property, which was "likely to occur in September", a year after the notification of Steve's death, at a buyback value of £65,079.

By July 2019 she had still not received her funds and Rowanmoor told her that it did not have a timescale for when the funds would be returned. In an email that same month to Jenkins' financial adviser, TRG calls the investment "an illiquid product" that it was trying hard to sell.