Investment protection

There are lots of factors to take into account when you're making decisions about your finances. It's important you know how much of your money FSCS can protect before you sign up to anything, just in case something goes wrong. 

FSCS can pay you compensation if your financial services provider fails and can't pay back your money itself. We protect a range of financial products, each with its own limit to the amount of compensation we can pay.

Importantly, to protect your investment, the investment provider or adviser must be authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority or the Financial Conduct Authority. You can check this on the FCA register.

Before considering their advice or choosing to invest with them, ask these questions:

What happens if you give me bad advice and your firm fails?

Are all the products you advise people about protected if the firm fails?

How much of my money is protected?

And when considering the actual  investment product on offer, ask the provider or adviser:

Is this investment product covered by FSCS?

How much of my money is protected?

What would happen to my money if something happened to your business?

Only when you've got satisfactory answers to these questions can you be sure that your money is safe, should the firm or the advisor go out of business. 

For more information about keeping your money protected, read our 'Key questions' content and check our compensation limits.