Thousands sue Hargreaves Lansdown for £20,000 'plus interest'

5,000 investors are now suing Hargreaves Lansdown, it has emerged. More than 5,000 people who invested in Neil Woodford’s collapsed equity fund are suing, claiming that the investment platform was still promoting the fund even when it was aware of its problems.

The number of people suing Hargreaves Lansdown, the UK’s largest investment site, has almost doubled in the past two years, according to the claims management firm RGL Management. RGL said it expected the claims to total more than £200m, with the average individual claim, including interest, about £20,000.

RGL argues on behalf of investors who lost their savings that Hargreaves Lansdown continued to recommend the Woodford fund right up to the day of its collapse, even though the investment platform was “aware of the fund’s longstanding portfolio diversification and liquidity issues”.

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Michael Green, director of RGL, said: “Adding thousands more claimants today to the RGL Group action represents another step closer to holding Hargreaves Lansdown to account for its conduct in relation to the WEIF.” RGL said its claim was for “investor losses sustained as a result of Hargreaves Lansdown’s conduct in continuing to recommend [Woodford’s fund] right up to the day of its highly publicised collapse, despite Hargreaves Lansdown being aware of the fund’s long-standing portfolio diversification and liquidity issues”.

After filing an initial tranche of claims in October 2022 on behalf of investors who suffered losses in the collapse of the vehicle, litigation firm RGL Management said more than 2,000 people had been added to the High Court lawsuit against Hargreaves Lansdown.

RGL filed on behalf of the new claimants on Friday and expects to add more Hargreaves Lansdown customers to the lawsuit next year. Hargreaves Lansdown declined to comment. It rejected all of RGL’s claims in 2022 “for lack of a substantive basis of claim”.