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In 2013, whilst working abroad, I was verbally (face-to-face) advised by a deVere advisor to invest in a specific product based on my specific requirements, specifically my ability to easily access the money at any time in the future with no/minimal charges. After paying monthly into the recommended product for nearly 3 years I quit my job and moved back to the UK. It was at this point that it became apparent that the investment product I had invested in was a long term investment fund with a 25-year term, and accessing my funds prior to the end of the term in 2028 would result in massive losses, akin to over 75% of the total value of the fund. As I am no longer in a position to keep up the monthly payments and in no way verbally agreed to such an inflexible product I can report that I was badly, if not fraudulently, advised by deVere. According to the deVere group their specific group company that provided the advice is based in Switzerland, which, funnily enough, doesn't have a financial ombudsman like the UK that would take up such complaints. As such I have no other alternative but to employ a solicitor in Switzerland to pursue the matter through the courts. Given my experience I would advise against using deVere for any financial advice. It's clear their only aim is to benefit personally at the detriment of their clients. Avoid.

So I was contacted by deVere sometime late 2013 and signed on to a policy/product. Somewhere along the line I lost my job and things went bad. I needed cash so I decided to withdraw from the policy and cash out. It's been over 10 months now of disappointment, and the account manager won't pick up my calls or return missed calls till I make the one and half hour drive to their office only to be promised a new date which is not kept. Now I feel a lot of regret having signed up with this institution here in Ghana. Thanks BAF

Hi, I was approached by financial advisors of the Vere Group (in Switzerland) and they advised Generali Vision Plan. Although the 1st financial advisor seemed very engaged and I signed up to the Generali Vision Plan short thereafter he left the company and since there has been enormous rotation leading to practically no followup, delays in portfolio changes and limited advise, which led me to have to start doing it myself. Recently I noticed that the fees of my Vision plan were significantly higher then was explained to me by the Veere Group. In short it seems that it will become difficult to get a positive return on this plan. This is always a risk when investing, and I am sure De Vere Group has professional advisors as well, but I would suggest to be very vigilant on what you sign up to.

In 2009 we approached a firm named Siddals in UK to obtain advice on investments which were to provide an income for our retirement in Spain. We made it very clear that we were not prepared to invest in anything that put our capital at any serious risk. The questionnaire that we completed confirmed our investment profile as “cautious”, which was described as follows: “I am cautious and dislike risk. I prefer security of capital and predictable investments. I accept that this may result in low rates of return being earned on my portfolio. I also accept that interest returns from deposit based investments move up and down, and when compared with the rate of inflation may produce a poor real return.” The proportion of my portfolio allocated to this risk profile was 100%. Siddals was subsequently taken over by the deVere Group. In November 2009 deVere produced a report that recommended four funds: (a) Aria Absolute Income Protected Fund, (b) EEA Life Settlements Fund (c) Iveagh Wealth Fund, and (c) New Earth Solutions. The Aria fund offered 80% protection of the invested capital. In June 2010 on the advice of deVere Spain’s managing director we sold our Aria investment and invested heavily in United Asset Management Strategic Growth Fund, United Asset Management Sàrl of Port Valais, Switzerland, (UAM). At that time, and not disclosed by deVere, was the fact that the deVere Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Nigel Green, was the 100% owner of UAM. This is clearly confirmed by the registration records of the Confédération Suisse of which I have copies. At the time we were given a factsheet that described the fund as being “United Asset Management – Strategic Growth Fund”. The factsheet also stated that “currently, Mr Kellermann acts as the fund manager to United Asset Management”. This refers to Mr Cobus Kellermann, who at that time was joint owner of the Mauritius based Belvedere Management Group with Mr David Cosgrove. In a newsletter in March 2015 deVere claimed to have had a role in exposing alleged investment fraud being carried out by Belvedere. What deVere failed to mention was that the perpetrators of that fraud, Messrs Kellermann and Cosgrove, held senior positions in United Asset Management at the time and were instrumental in the failure of the Strategic Growth Fund. Mr Cosgrove one of has, due to his failure to comply with the codes of the FSA, subsequently been disqualified by the Financial Services Commission of Mauritius from “holding position as officer in any licensee of the FSC for a period of 5 years”. According to its News Letters deVere boast that it is the worlds largest “independent financial adviser”. As such it has an obligation to remain completely independent. This obligation was breached by its selling of investments through a company wholly owned by its CEO who was benefiting from an additional layer of fees paid by us as the investors. In February 2013 deVere informed us of problems with the UAM Strategic Growth Fund and advised us to sell our holdings. We completed a dealing form instructing the sale of those holdings and the purchase of holdings in an alternative fund. Unfortunately, the advice from deVere was given far too late and on 22 February 2013, only five months after Nigel Green disposed of his interests in United Asset Management, the Strategic Growth Fund was suspended. Since 27 October 2015, the fund has been in administration with no guarantee of any monies being recovered by investors. In November 2015 we submitted a complaint to deVere’s customer relations department. We received a response, not from deVere Customer Relations, but from deVere Corporate Legal. In its various responses to our complaint deVere has endeavoured to distance itself from UAM by saying that the Strategic Growth Fund had nothing to do with UAM. Initially deVere stated that the association between the two on the factsheet was solely for marketing purposes. If that were the case then the fund was, at best, being mis-represented. deVere then changed its stance by stating that “whilst the fund in question may be labelled as the UAM Strategic Growth Fund by SEB Life International in its statements ...” This is a blatant attempt to distort the truth as the insurer at the time of our investment in UAM Strategic Growth Fund in 2010 was Irish Life International Ltd and not SEB. We also have a series of emails directly from deVere at that time which clearly label the fund as being “United Asset Management Strategic Growth Fund”. Despite admissions by deVere that there was a serious conflict of interest and that there were other faults on its part the deVere Corporate Legal department constantly looks for loopholes and refuses to consider our complaint on its merits. Through its unethical approach in advising us to invest in funds that were not appropriate for our risk profile, and its poor management, deVere has caused us to suffer a substantial financial loss and years of stress. This situation warrants financial recompense from deVere to compensate us for loss and stress.

A word to those looking for information on scams & unethical dealings by DeVere.They engage in careful content management and 'flood' sites like these with their responses which then rank first....knowing that people are lazy researchers. Google's own research shows 53% of people do not look beyond the first two responses and 89% do not look past page one. They are 'managing' (read: manipulating) this site to bury their sins. This company is the worst of the worst- incapable of change as the corporate culture is rotten top down to bottom. They do employ naïve & desperate sales people who may appear plausible. Tough times are coming to Dubai (Oct 2016) - hopefully this parasitic company will finally fold in this time- and never be heard of again. Caute!

I first started with DeVere when I met one of their consultants in Cyprus,where they were based-all was well at first. They suddenly closed their local office and I was left with no information of who to contact. 4 weeks later I instigated contact with their London office and was able to resume a relationship with DeV . However as time passed I found that I was being passed from various consultants only discovering this when I initiated the contact, by 2015 I spoke to UK as I was not happy with the performance of my portfolio, to be told that at least it was better than the Cypriot Banks!! 4weeks after this I was still waiting for recommendations for my portfolio. In addition to the above my consultant in Cyprus personally borrowed money from me, then went to their AD office in Middle East, she has not fully repaid this money and now refuses all contact. Suffice to say I have moved elsewhere, and would find it hard to recommend DeV to anyone

Invested in UAM Strategic Growth fund on advice of your adviser. He told me that it was medium-low risk. I even note that your founder Mr Green played a big part in UAM and knew about this funds executives. Apparently you say you advised investors to leave the fund but I for one never got any such communication. In fact from inception of policy until I noticed that the fund was suspeneded there was zero communication form your represenatives. Upshot--Guess what I lost the lot when the fund collapsed. Since then I've sent several emails to your client department and the adviser - latest emails get no reply Obviously once you've got your pound of flesh the investor doesn't matter anymore Shame on you!

Devere is not a company to deal with. They give you bad advice, take their commissions and then ran away. In Mozambique they had even closed their offices when they realised there are to many unhappy customers in Mozambique. After they closed their offices here it took about 18 months before I was able to meet with a representative from their Zimbabwe office who apparently now oversees the operations in Mozambique. I was contacted on a few occasions with a request to meet a representative in Maputo. I agreed every time but it never happened. A few of their own employees had even said to me the advice given to me was totally incorrect and my funds should not have been invested through the platform it was invested or invested in the funds it was invested in. it seems like they went for the highest commissions for themselves on not looking after my interests. I lost more than USD 200 000 due to their bad advice and are still loosing today as I am trying to get out but it seems like it is impossible or Devere does not want to assist in this. I just can not get answers out of them. Even their client relations does not give you satisfactory answers. I had tried that route and took them about 4 weeks to give a very unsatisfactorily answer. My advice stay away from Devere if you want to keep your money safe. It is my plan to report them to the ombudsman and my attorney is working on the submission. Entities like these should be closed down by the authorities world wide. I don't hide therefore herewith my contact details: Email: jurie@tvcabo.co.mz Tel no +258 823083630

Not a lot happened since my previous Pissed-consumer review and official claim to deVere UK end 2015, regarding the inclusion in my portfolio of what subsequently appeared as a 'boutique commodity hedge fund", i.e the Brighton SPC Kijani fund. I later read the latter was involved in a financial criminality case now being investigated by relevant authorities in the Cayman Islands, where the fund moved from Mauritius Island in obscure conditions, without the customer being advised of any of the worrying chain of events occurring since end 2014, if not earlier, allowing him to prevent foreseeable damages as the adviser kept silent. With things being un- and misrepresented to me, I indeed suddenly learned that the fund was placed into liquidation by a PWC ( being the appointed liquidator ) letter dated october 9, 2015. As an investor, I then provided the appointed liquidator, through deVere, the details of units sold January 2015, 29, amounting to more than 25.000 GBP. Since then, no news even though deVere assured me at managerial level they were "doing all they can as a company to resolve the situation ( in object ) as soon as possible", and that I will be "kept updated with any news as and when they get it". My claim was partly addressed by their Corporate and Legal Department in February 2016, with regards to legal matters, mainly the compliance of their activities to the applicable regulations in my countries ( Belgium ). Actually they mainly try to cover any legal responsibility, with arguments I am checking versus my country's regulations. I never got any response from the Customer service, although this was asked, further to deVere Corporate & Legal's suggestion. The reasons of my claim were largely and factually detailed, starting by the fact that such fund should not have been be sold by deVere-Belgium end 2012, just before a sudden and unnotified closure of this office, de facto transferring Belgian customers- who had no choice- to deVere UK, which then declined responsibilities about what their Belgian office did. They also argue they are not the investor ( the Life-insurance company , just an adviser, and one can legitimately wonder what are they paid for. One issue is that the poor customer service, the lack of pro-active communication, and the delays in answering questions have at least worsen my situation. Recently, de Vere again changed the adviser handling my interests, which means a new breach of continuity in the follow-up of critical matters. As of today, I still have more than 25.000 GBP "on hold", hanging in the air, with no clue of what possibly happened since the written confirmation late october 2015 to PWC of the required proof of investment . I have no informations whatsoever about subsequent developments affecting the outcome of my investment notification. I cannot imagine a company like PWC has not come with some conclusions, even temporary, over a period of 10 Months. Philippe Descamps