UK FSCS continues working closely with administrators of SVS Securities

The UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) has provided an update to clients of SVS Securities plc, an investment firm offering broker-dealer and discretionary managed services which went into administration last summer.

FSCS says it is continuing to work closely with the Leonard Curtis/SVS towards delivering a transfer of client money and assets to a new broker. Teams at both organisations are continuing to function despite the COVID 19 restrictions.

“We’re working with the joint special administrators on the steps necessary to return custody assets and client money as soon as possible”, FSCS said.

As FinanceFeeds has reported, the Administrators anticipate that, other than a very small number of exceptions, there will be a full return to clients in respect of custody assets and client money. The exceptions relate to a number of clients who may not be eligible to receive compensation in respect of any shortfalls arising out of specific arrangements between the clients in question and the company and costs from the FSCS or whose losses exceed the FSCS’ compensation limit of £85,000 per claimant.

The Administrators have secured client money of approximately £24.9 million, in full, from across 20 pre-appointment bank accounts.

The Administrators initially estimated that SVS Securities had approximately 21,000 clients, however, after conducting further analysis on the client and account base that is held across three different IT platforms, the Administrators identified a number of clients holding multiple accounts with the company. This further analysis has identified approximately 19,200 unique clients. The custody assets and client money are held by a mixture of execution only, discretionary and FX clients. As at August 5, 2019, SVS’s account base comprised 14,855 equity accounts (including 773 discretionary accounts), 10 prime broker accounts and 6,547 FX accounts.