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I work for a pensions company and, at the moment, we're inundated with people complaining about the way their pensions are shrinking and losing money.
I got a letter at the start of the week from a financial adviser complaining about this very thing and demanding an audit trail be run to find out who delayed the pension being paid, and compensation be paid out. Since we were just about to pay the claim (and therefore had the paper file ordered) I gave into my curiousity and checked through the file and found that there was indeed a good reason for the delay.
The basic timeline is this:
Early August: A pack to transfer the pension to another provider is requested by the financial adviser.
Mid September: They ring up to say they've lost the forms and could we resend them. Despite our 7 working day turnaround someone photocopies the forms from the file and faxes them over that same day.
Early October: We receive half the forms and phone the financial adviser to inform them of this.
Late October: We finally receive the last form from the other pension scheme, and of course the fund has dropped by about 15% by now. We then ring up the adviser to inform them of the fund drop (any drop of 10% or more and we need confirmation to continue) and they tell us to proceed, and then send in the aforementioned letter of complaint for 'our' unforgivable delay.
I can only be glad that the letter got passed to complaints to deal with, otherwise the amount of concentrated sarcasm in any reply I wrote would probably cause the letter to spontaneously combust.
I got a letter at the start of the week from a financial adviser complaining about this very thing and demanding an audit trail be run to find out who delayed the pension being paid, and compensation be paid out. Since we were just about to pay the claim (and therefore had the paper file ordered) I gave into my curiousity and checked through the file and found that there was indeed a good reason for the delay.
The basic timeline is this:
Early August: A pack to transfer the pension to another provider is requested by the financial adviser.
Mid September: They ring up to say they've lost the forms and could we resend them. Despite our 7 working day turnaround someone photocopies the forms from the file and faxes them over that same day.
Early October: We receive half the forms and phone the financial adviser to inform them of this.
Late October: We finally receive the last form from the other pension scheme, and of course the fund has dropped by about 15% by now. We then ring up the adviser to inform them of the fund drop (any drop of 10% or more and we need confirmation to continue) and they tell us to proceed, and then send in the aforementioned letter of complaint for 'our' unforgivable delay.
I can only be glad that the letter got passed to complaints to deal with, otherwise the amount of concentrated sarcasm in any reply I wrote would probably cause the letter to spontaneously combust.
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