I seem have landed myself in an ongoing dispute with my IFA. Basically it is all to do with the commission he earns from recommending the products he has sold me.
A few years back, when we first met, I took out a pension, a combined PHI/Critical Illness/Life Assurance policy and a savings policy. [He earned a lot of commission out of me!!!] I believe the full commission on these would have been only fully earned after 4 years. In his contract he states that if you cancel a policy and he gets asked for the commission back, he reserves the right to in turn ask for the same amount back from you.
About two years after this I got a new job and which offered me a company pension and a level of PHI, so I asked his advice. He said that I shouldn't pay out for things twice and suggested I cancel the pension and PHI. A week or so later a letter dropped through my door from him stating that he was fully within his rights to ask for this lost commission back. I was quite upset as I had acted in good faith, but agreed that I would try to put him in touch with new work if possible. Indeed I introduced him to a couple of people, one of whom later went on to do some business with him.
About this same time he also recommended that I took out a State Holder pension (due to lower charges than my old one and basically used to "top-up" my company pension) and also recommended that I ditched my current Critical Illness/Life Assurance in favour of another due to it's better long term pricing structure. Both of which I did. Because he had handled the cancelling of policies before I assumed he had cancelled the old as he had certainly set up the new. The new policy also was sold to me as being very flexible in that I could change the insured amounts if I wished, among other things.
Another year or so on from then, I noticed that he hadn't cancelled the original policy as I had first thought so had been paying out a lot of money unnecessarily. I then cancelled this policy and due to circumstances changing again, I wanted to change the amounts on the new Life Assurance/Critical Illness policy down to about a 1/3 of what they were. I thought this would be fine since it was a "flexible" policy and the terms of his conditions only kicked in when a policy was cancelled, not amended. He is now stating otherwise.
I have totally lost all confidence in him now and plan to do no further business with him. The problem is he is now asking for these sums back, or that I recommend further people to him. This troubles my conscience, as I could not recommend someone that I thought was not doing their job very well!!
What can I do? I don't wish to pay him a penny of his "commission" since I feel he has earned a lot out of me already, and really I haven't done anything wrong. The first time round, he advised me to cancel the policies and the second time I changed the insured amounts on a policy that was sold to me as being "flexible". Also his terms of business only state that commission is repayable when it is cancelled [ie, not amended]. Also I don't wish to recommend him to people, as after all this, I don't feel he is very good at his job.
Any people out there got any advice or been in similar situations? Also how long can he legitimately hold these threats over me for? If he waits a year, decides that I haven't recommended enough people to him and then asks for it back, is he entitled to it?