An insurance boss has been banned from company management for seven years following his firm’s misadministration of the Optimum Retirement Benefits Plan (ORBP).

Ivor Jenkins was the sole appointed director of Optimum Financial Solutions Limited from May 2002 and agreed to Optimum Financial Solutions administering the scheme when the company began to struggle financially in 2015, to bring in a new source of income.

The Insolvency Service carried out investigations into Optimum Financial Solutions in 2016 after receiving complaints, resulting in the firm being wound up in court in February 2018.

Further investigations revealed that Optimum Financial Solutions had failed to keep adequate records, did not provide relevant information to the tax authorities and was derelict in its duty in providing ORBP’s members with up-to-date information.

Jenkins claimed that he was not involved in the promotion of the pension scheme, although a report from The Pensions Regulator (TPR) found that his company did play a role.

He also revealed that neither he nor anyone else at Optimum Financial Solutions had permission to talk to clients about pension schemes.

TPR established that ORPB was not being run in an appropriate and it had concerns over the scheme’s members benefits, understood to total more than £13m.

The ORPB independent trustee was unable to reconcile members accounts and identify assets, primarily due to the misadministration by Optimum Financial Solutions.

Jenkins provided a disqualification undertaking, which was accepted by the Secretary of State on 7 June 2019. Effective from 28 June 2019, he is banned from directly or indirectly becoming involved, without the permission of the court, in the promotion, formation or management of a company.

“Having worked in the highly regulated insurance industry, Ivor Jenkins should have known that there are stringent guidelines when it comes to administering a pension scheme,” Official Receiver Ken Beasley noted.

“He gained personally from allowing his company to administer the pension scheme, while members were left in the dark about their savings, and for that we welcome this disqualification which seriously curtails his ability to run a limited company.”

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