Having discussed matters with the UK's Financial Conduct Authority, the sole director of GPC SIPP Ltd, which operates self-invested personal pensions, has called in the administrators.

The firm also runs SSASes (small self-administered schemes). It has appointed Adam Stephens and Henry Shinners of the law firm of Smith & Williamson as joint administrators. Its relationship managers are still taking calls.

The firm recently admitted to the FCA that it was "cash-flow insolvent."

Between 2009 and 2012, GPC accepted highly risky non-standard investments (NSIs) into its SIPPs. A high proportion of these were in the failed Harlequin property investment schemes. GPC has been subject to a court claim from 141 clients who want the firm to compensate them because it was not 'duly diligent' enough before it accepted these NSIs into the SIPPs. There are also a significant number of "SIPP due diligence" complaints against the firm that relate to NSIs and the Financial Ombudsman Service is considering them. GPC has expended considerable treasure in its efforts to deal with these claims and complaints and it is this that tipped it into insolvency.

One of the FOS's decisions on the subject is being challenged in the courts.

In early 2017, Andrew Warwick-Thompson, the executive director of regulatory policy at the Pensions Regulator, wrote in a blog that HM Government ought to do various things to help trustees stop scams. One of these things was a ban on cold-calling (promised by the Government in November of that year and timed for 2020); another was the banning of SSASes, because he thought that they were all to easy to set up and also because they were (and are) exempt from many of the legal duties designed to protect members that are applicable to larger schemes. In October of that year Liz Hickey, the regulator's director of communications, told an audience that her outfit was not proposing to ban transfers to SSASes.