How to help protect your savings and investments from scams
Find out how to spot a financial scam and help protect your savings and investments.
Duration: 1 Min
Date: 01 Sept 2025
What types of scams are there?
Pension scams
These scams aim to steal money from your pension. Scammers may offer incentives to invest your pension in certain stocks or persuade you to transfer it to them.
With many people having pension pots worth tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds, it’s no surprise that these are a target for scammers.
Two of the most common pension scams to be aware of are schemes offering early pension release and free pension reviews. Generally, you can only take money from your pension once you reach age 55. So any scheme offering to help you access your money before this is likely to be a scam.
Investment scams (also known as "Pump and Dump")
Fraudsters can promote lesser-known, low-value shares – often with exaggerated or false claims of big returns - trying to entice you to purchase them.
As more people buy, this drives (“pumps”) the share price up. Once the price has risen, the fraudsters sell the shares they already hold at a profit (“dump”). The sudden sell off by fraudsters causes the share price to collapse, leaving you holding shares worth less than you paid, meaning you lose money.
These types of scams often use high-pressure sales tactics to rush you into ‘time-limited’ offers. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. WhatsApp and social media scams Scammers may contact you by impersonating a well-known expert with false information and advice, in an attempt to “Pump and Dump”. This could be via:
- Emails
- Text messages
- WhatsApp messages
- Fake social media adverts
- Over the phone
They can also pretend to be established and well-known companies, and try to encourage you to make a payment to a fraudulent bank account.
What to look out for
If you’re contacted by someone you don’t know, be aware of any behaviour that might be suspicious, such as:
- Out-of-the-blue contact
- Pressuring you to act quickly
- Offering you high/guaranteed returns
- Offering you access to your pension early
- Unsolicited investment advice
Top tips to stay safe online
- Protect your identity online – create strong passwords, change them regularly, don't use the same password for different sites and don't write them down or give them to anyone else
- Don’t open emails from suspicious senders – if you receive a suspicious email, don’t click on any links or download any attachments
- Only download software from trusted websites – if you need to download software, use trusted sources and go directly to their websites instead of downloading from a third party
- Beware of unsolicited investment advice – don’t hesitate to contact us if you receive unexpected investment tips or are pressured to invest your money. By looking at the Financial Services Register, you can also check if a company is genuine and FCA authorised
- Stay alert with cold calls, emails, social media and search engine results
- Cold calls have been illegal since 2019. So if you get anyone calling you out of the blue about your pension or other savings and investments, it’s likely to be a scam.
Always do your research – before making any payments or investments, take time to review the recipient company. Use trusted public information to help, like the FCA website, alongside specialist financial news sources, such as Bloomberg and the Financial Times
If you’re in doubt about a company’s legitimacy, check with the UK’s financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) at https://www.fca.org.uk/scamsmart
The information in this article should not be regarded as financial advice. Information is based on our understanding in August 2025.
