MSE News: £60m compensation for Scottish Equitable pension savers

Former_MSE_Guy

This is the discussion thread for the following MSE News Story:

"The regulator has ordered one of the largest ever payouts from a single firm after 300 different admin gaffes ..."

Read the full story:
£60m compensation for Scottish Equitable pension savers

Paulgonnabedebtfree

If memory serves me correctly, they areone of the better providers too - or at least they were 20 years ago. I had a letter from them a few months ago asking if I still lived here. I think I better phone them to see if I've any money due. It's unlikely because I stopped contributing when I left the job I had. Some time later, I got a letter saying that my pension was scrapped because it's small value had fallen so low it was then zero.

dunstonh

if memory serves me correctly, they areone of the better providers too - or at least they were 20 years ago.

They did go through a window a few years back where their service was pretty poor. However, nothing that appeared any worse than any of the others. Aviva must be sh*tting themselves

peterbaker

I can confirm that in the last 10 years, Scottish Equitable/Aegon have NOT been one of the better providers.

I have had approximately £10,000 invested with them throughout most of that time and essentially all it represents is the money paid in on my behalf in 2000 and 2001 after their agents came and gave me and colleagues a talk about the best thing since sliced bread which might even be better than the Final Salary Pension my employer had just frozen after a takeover. (Yeah right ....)

Since then ScotEq have been using my money for their own profit and have taken out around £3,000 in charges whilst the current value still represents barely any increase over what was paid in.

Aegon AXA and Aviva are all as bad as one another and I haven't even begun commenting on the rest of the alphabet. The funds of these companies held on behalf of pension planholders like myself should all be nationalised like the Danish and Dutch schemes without further ado.

Rogues is too kind a word to describe the people responsible for the dire mismanagement and misappropriations - most of which will never even be publicly known I am sure.

dunstonh

The funds of these companies held on behalf of pension planholders like myself should all be nationalised like the Danish and Dutch schemes without further ado.

Great. Lets create more Government to do things less efficiently than the private sector does already. (as in private sector can already beat or match those Danish and Dutch charges without the negatives those schemes have).

peterbaker

dunstonh wrote: »

....as in private sector can already beat or match those Danish and Dutch charges without the negatives those schemes have.

Can as in will or as in probably never would unless forced to do so?

feesarefare

dunstonh wrote: »

Great. Lets create more Government to do things less efficiently than the private sector does already. (as in private sector can already beat or match those Danish and Dutch charges without the negatives those schemes have).

Exactly. I fail to see what Mse guy hopes to gain from these kind of headlines. He seems to be making a habit of revealing his daily mail roots.

peterbaker

I completely fail to see what is exact at all about dunstonh's comment. I have so many examples of the private sector's work stacked in my garage as a result of collecting a number of private sector schemes just like ordinary non-IFA folk do in the course of their normal enforced job-hopping that "exact" is just not how any of it looks to me. Deliberate obfuscation via renaming and clutter, brand new vocabulary like "reattribution" (meaning in most cases daylight robbery), and "wind-up" (meaning proper wind-up in any language), smoke and mirrors is how it all looks.

I currently have potential future lawsuits against Aviva and their agents, against AXA and their agents (two different agents two different plans), against Aegon ScotEq and their agent, and against two others and their agents.

I am sure I am not alone with my collected pension fund detrita and future opportunities for putting it right.

Who are the agents? IFAs of course, exactly that or not?

yelf

peterbaker wrote: »

I have had approximately £10,000 invested with them throughout most of that time and essentially all it represents is the money paid in on my behalf in 2000 and 2001

Since then ScotEq have been using my money for their own profit and have taken out around £3,000 in charges whilst the current value still represents barely any increase over what was paid in.

You are aware that the overall return on equity markets (Uk at least) over the last decade has been 5% at best? so the return has nothing to do with your provider but everything to do with YOUR CHOICE of investment fund? And charges exist in most things, i dont know of many charities offering investments.

yelf

peterbaker wrote: »

I completely fail to see what is exact at all about dunstonh's comment. I have so many examples of the private sector's work stacked in my garage as a result of collecting a number of private sector schemes just like ordinary non-IFA folk do in the course of their normal enforced job-hopping that "exact" is just not how any of it looks to me. Deliberate obfuscation via renaming and clutter, brand new vocabulary like "reattribution" (meaning in most cases daylight robbery), and "wind-up" (meaning proper wind-up in any language), smoke and mirrors is how it all looks.



Who are the agents? IFAs of course, exactly that or not?

IFAS are the agents? Is that what you're saying? Really?

peterbaker

You are aware that the overall return on equity markets (Uk at least) over the last decade has been 5% at best? so the return has nothing to do with your provider but everything to do with YOUR CHOICE of investment fund? And charges exist in most things, i dont know of many charities offering investments.

Yes I was waiting for someone to utter that old and very useless chestnut, yelf. If companies cannot manage investments in the prevailing climate they should say so. But of course they don't say so. The prevailing climate is a smokescreen for all sorts of jolly wheezes. Would be a shame to give back the money and say "Sorry we seem to have lost the plot - perhaps you'd better put it under the mattress, Sir." Instead they shrug their corporate shoulders and say they must obviously levy charges to cover their overheads. Obviously? Why levy them on us if they can't even organise a booze up in a brewery?

With this particular fund I got fed up with ScotEq's inept ability at controlling the yoyo in 2005. I chose my moment near a peak when my fund had just about recovered to its original paid-in value and switched it to cash.

This last year they have achieved a net growth of about 0.5% in the cash fund having charged 0.6% for doing so. Blithering idiots is too good a description for cash fund "managers" who achieve results like that.

And yes, of course the agents are IFAs ... did you expect them to be the man down the pub?