.Under financial services regulations, all businesses must be covered by an external dispute resolution scheme. Ross Asset Management is covered by FSCL.

The Wellington-based investment firm was placed into receivership this month and there is a gap of $438 million between the amount claimed to be in client accounts and proven assets.

There is little hope of the money being recovered and some investors may have to return payments already made to them.

But FSCL chief executive Susan Taylor says some investors’ money might have been saved had worried investors raised their concerns earlier.

She said people who eventually made complaints to her organisation had been battling for up to nine months to withdraw their funds.

“People are reluctant to complain but if people had come forward earlier, it wouldn’t have prevented the widespread loss but it would have saved those who invested in the last few months.”

Taylor knew of one investor who had put money into the hands of Ross Asset Management just weeks before it went into receivership.

She said she was confident FSCL could not have done more in this case.

“As soon as we got a cluster of complaints on the same issue we let the FMA know. They’d had some complaints themselves and when they heard we were getting them too, they swung into action.”