Sipp provider Stadia Trustees halts new business

Essex-based Sipp provider Stadia Trustees has put a halt to accepting all new regulated business after it varied its regulatory permissions.

Tony Hales, managing director of Stadia, said the firm had chosen to vary its permissions while it undergoes ‘structural changes’.

A note on the Financial Services Authority (FSA) register said: ‘Stadia will cease to accept all new business from new and/or existing clients for which it has Part IV permission with immediate effect.

‘New business is deemed to be any business that is not already contracted with the client prior to this variation taking effect.’

It added: ‘Stadia may only hold or control client money and assets in respect of personal pension scheme(s) that the firm operates.’

Hales said it was a short term measure due indirectly to capital adequacy.

‘It’s effective immediately, [it’s] voluntary, for the short term while we engage some structural changes,’ he said.

Stadia was one of eight small Sipp firms to be inspected by the FSA in 2011 as part of the regulator’s efforts to tackle the risks posed by small firms and unregulated collective investment schemes (Ucis).

Stadia has a heavy weighting in Ucis and overseas investments.

At the time of the inspection Hales said: ‘I’m not afraid of what the FSA finds. What I feel confident about is, if they question things, we have a process in place to refer them to.’