Not upheld: Other regulated complaint complaint against Wealthify Limited

Decision detail

Summary

Mr W opened a Junior ISA with Wealthify in December 2020 and received a £25 cashback offer. When he applied to open an ISA in his own name in January 2021, he was ineligible for the £40 new customer cashback offer because Wealthify deemed him an existing customer. Mr W complained, arguing that his son should be considered the customer for the JISA and therefore he should qualify as a new customer for the ISA. The ombudsman rejected this argument, finding that the parent/legal guardian is the customer for a JISA, not the child, and therefore Mr W was correctly identified as an existing customer. The ombudsman upheld Wealthify's response, including their offer to allow Mr W to choose which cashback offer to receive, and did not uphold the complaint.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman determined that Mr W, not his son, is the customer for the JISA because a child cannot directly own a financial product and the JISA is structured to be opened and owned by a parent or legal guardian on the child's behalf. Therefore, Mr W was correctly identified as an existing customer when he applied for the ISA in January 2021, making him ineligible for the new customer cashback offer at that time. The ombudsman found no discrimination occurred and that Wealthify's offer to allow Mr W to choose which cashback offer to receive was fair and reasonable.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website