Government set to ban hidden insurance commissions (such as Rendall and Rittner’s captive company schemes)
Close on the heels of Liam Spender’s win against First Port property management, whereby £100,000 in building insurance commissions is to be returned to residents, Michael Gove has announced plans to ban such hidden commissions. This follows a long campaign by LKP and others. Rendall and Rittner operate a number of captive company insurance schemes which Mr Richard Daver of Rendall and Rittner has described as great value for residents (at a meeting Mike O’Driscoll had with him in 2021)!. It would seem the government do not agree with Mr Daver and are finally pulling their finger out and making these schemes illegal. This may have serious consequences for Rendall and Rittner’s bottom line as these schemes seem to make a very significant contribution to their profits. Oh dear how sad…never mind!
Let us hope R&R do not turn their creative accounting talents to recovering this shortfall in their revenue stream from already hard pressed leaseholders!
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Raymond I fear you are spot on – they will be forced to replace these lost sources of easy money with some other scheme….so we need the audit of Rendall and Rittner published ASAP and to repeat it annually. Would be good if it was done by an accountant also rather than someone who is not an accountant and who has given incorrect advice to CBW residents on Right to Manage
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Completely agree Vincit. A properly qualified accountant, totally independent of R&R, would be able to offer the necessary forensic analysis, technical expertise,and of course time, required to challenge R&Rs books and hold their feet to the fire.
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Wow. That’s bad. How much have we been taken to the cleaners ?
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Hi Siewkheng
Well as far as I can rely on anything R and R say, they do not have any role in buildings insurance for CBW. or at least none of their captive companies are involved. However, this little ‘scheme’, which they use at many other developments, does make up a big chunk of their profits – so if they lose such big profits they will be trying to make them up elsewhere. :). What fresh horrors will they come up with for CBW? We must be on guard.
I see the CBWRA have finally done some sort of audit of R and R but are refusing to share the findings with residents.
This should have been done two years ago in fact but the Chair of CBWRA (Mr Thompson) strongly resisted such an audit throughout 2021 while I was on the committee claiming that we needed to be ‘forward facing’ and have a ‘collegiate relationship’ with Rendall and Rittner. There was a vote in committee in 2021 and the Chair applied considerable pressure to the committee not to support an audit. Despite that 50% voted to consult residents on the matter. The Chair decided not to do that. Hence R and R have been free to continue doing what they do for the last 2 years. They have not been too ‘collegiate’ with us as residents, in view of service charge increases or standard of services delivered…. so it seems like a one way street whereby CBWRA soft pedal with R &R and get nothing in return.
Residents have paid Mr Southam £250 an hour to do this ‘audit’ so we really should have access to the findings, however provisional.
Sadly, the lack of transparency is characteristic of the current CBWRA regime
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