Today's post sees us commenting on a rather frenetic period in the world of Reverse Pension Plans (RPPs) and Traded Endowment Policies (TEPs).

I've written about Global Pension Plan many times before and it is again in the news. The admin, Stella, has posted in the forum that there are about 1,200 individual member profiles that need updating before the scheme can be considered ready to begin the process of validating things prior to payment. They haven't closed membership yet as far as I can tell so there may still be an opportunity for you to take part if you have been wavering. I should say though that the website is not that reliable so you may need to keep trying if you don't succeed the first time.

Also announced at Global Pension Plan is the opportunity for members to purchase additional memberships in another scheme. As I can't access the site at the moment I'm having to rely on comments from other forums but it appears that there are up to an additional 250,000 policies being made available for €20 each (again this will need to be checked). Now, it seems as though the admin believed this to be a wonderful surprise for the members. That, however, is the last thing it seems to be. Many members have raised red flags and are wondering what is going on. As far as I can tell there is no reason to panic as the original scheme will still go ahead as planned and be totally separate from this newly announced 'surprise'. A little early to see just how this will turn out.

Another RPP that has re-established itself is HCI25 as they have now moved to a new hosting company. They are able to accept new sign ups as of now but backoffice facilities will not be online until November so there is still some uncertainty surrounding this offering but hopefully things will become clearer for all as November arrives.

The folks over at Imperia Invest have also been busy making an announcement that will no longer accept e-bullion or e-gold as payment methods. They are now only accepting Liberty Reserve as the payment source. Immediately following this announcement there was some speculation that Liberty Reserve had been raided by the Cost Rican authorities and closed down. This appears to have been a total fabrication as the site is still up and a representative has flatly denied any involvement from the authorities.

Somewhat ironically Imperia Invest complained that they could never get a response from e-bullion to any enquiry and reading comments on other forums there are many people who find Imperia Invest somewhat reticent in responding themselves. Again, at the time of writing, the site is not available and there doesn't seem to be any notification as to why this is. Hopefully it will return shortly.