Are some major scheme providers struggling?

DCF_Evaluator

I have a pension fund with a major insurance company. I am about to write to the CEO.

They have a UK-based call centre and everyone is very polite and uses the right meet and greet words.

I keep a manual record of my (Lifestyle) plan value. A few weeks ago I noticed that some of my plan had been transferred to another (still under my name) without instruction from me or advice from the provider. This isn't necessarily the end of the world but in the process:

- the overall plan value had dropped by a significant amount
- the change had been backdated to February this year.

This still is not a major issue (may be a 'Lifestyle' plan issue) ... ie there could be a good explanation. The issue is that the call centre staff, when I phoned for an explanation and pointed out the specific dates and values, were clearly completely foxed by whatever had happended.

Call backs from more experienced staff didn't happen and then records of the dates and text of my calls appeared mysteriously to change. People asked me to hold while they spoke to more experienced staff only to return to say ' ... John does not appear to have come into the office yet'.

The last word I had was last week when I was told it was a 'systems issue' which they are trying to resolve and I would receive a call back when it was resolved. Needless to say, this has not yet ocurred.

I was wondering ...

- Should institutions be communicating to the world that their staff are clearly foxed by basic queries?

- Should institutions be telling plan holders that our computers are 'a bit dodgy?'

- Am I alone in this experience?

Perhaps the CEO will be able to assist me. Will let you know.

Lokolo

I think you should be going through the complaints procedure, rather than writing "to the CEO".

GhIFA

Is this AEGON by any chance?

DCF_Evaluator

GhIFA ... it wouldn't be fair to document corporate names in a forum like this.

But I was wondering what promted you to pick that name in particular, there are many scheme providers.

dunstonh

Lifestyle strategy can work in different ways. Some will move amounts between funds on fixed dates to other funds with lower volatility. This requires no permission or notification in advance and it is not done to improve investment returns. Others will have different version of the same fund but to cover different vesting dates.

Insurance company staff can range from highly skilled to being complete disasters. Sadly, the latter is more common but that does reflect the fact that people prefer low cost to decent knowledge nowadays.

mania112

DCF_Evaluator wrote: »

GhIFA ... it wouldn't be fair to document corporate names in a forum like this.

But I was wondering what promted you to pick that name in particular, there are many scheme providers.

I don't think there's a particularly major issue here, but I see this forum as a 'name and shame' so I don't see why you wouldn't/shouldn't let us know who you are talking about.

It must be an American firm by the way you're using 'CEO'(!?).

Specifically, insurance providers can make mistakes and it wouldn't be a huge surprise for people to learn that folks who answer the phone are not the experts in their company.

If you have approached a pre-retirement milestone (age 55, 60) then this is probably not even an error.

But if it is, i'm sure you will be put right without being disadvantaged.

GhIFA

DCF_Evaluator wrote: »

GhIFA ... it wouldn't be fair to document corporate names in a forum like this.

But I was wondering what promted you to pick that name in particular, there are many scheme providers.

I don't see there being a particular issue in naming the company, this is a consumer forum after all.

The reason I asked was because it seems remarkably similar to a situation that a colleague at my former company had last year with an AEGON policy - that was attributed to an unknown "system glitch" by AEGON, and they seemed completely baffled as to why it had occurred or how to fix it. I have since moved companies so am unsure as to how it was resolved, if it has been.

DCF_Evaluator

GhIFA

Ah! So there is some 'previous' here .. (!). What you have written above is my experience almost word for word.

I am now left hoping that there is not a policy here of 'anything too hard to understand being routinely put down as a systems issue'. Easy to blame a computer system, it has no representation in parliament and its vocabulary currently being limited finds it harder to put up a defence.

Incidentally .. a slightly tangential issue ... more and more with institutions - and I include Banks, Mortgage providers etc as well - call centre staff are saying ' .. the computer says this' and/or 'the computer says that'. In other words reminiscent of that film, name escapes me, starring the computer 'HAL', human participation in the financial services world is being reduced to being the mouthpiece for a machine. Once machines have better voice output, call centre jobs for humans will go. HAL spoke fluent English.

I will get writing and let you know the outcome!

dunstonh

Incidentally .. a slightly tangential issue ... more and more with institutions - and I include Banks, Mortgage providers etc as well - call centre staff are saying ' .. the computer says this' and/or 'the computer says that'. In other words reminiscent of that film, name escapes me, starring the computer 'HAL', human participation in the financial services world is being reduced to being the mouthpiece for a machine. Once machines have better voice output, call centre jobs for humans will go. HAL spoke fluent English.

I started out in a bank. The branch had 44 staff and every job you did in the bank was graded. You had 3 weeks traiing on each role (sometimes more, sometimes less but it was manned by 2 staff - trainer and trainee). This included roles right down to cheque book clerk. Everybody had to do each role to progress. If you wanted to progress beyond a certain point, you had to sit the chartered banking exams (which was three nights a week from 6-9 at college). That same branch operates with about 15 staff now and most couldnt tell you much about banking and rely solely on what their screen tells them. Insurance companies used to operate similar models.

I am sure most people would love to go back to that again but when you mention that charges will have to go up, they baulk at it. We get the services that people are willing to pay for.

Daniel_Elkington

Use an IFA - let us take the headache for you.

You can shout and scream at us for someone other's failings, and we shall pass on that shouting and screaming back to them.

People make computers and people are flawed - so are their creations.

I remember Aviva about 3 years ago was a nightmare. On some policies there was one machine in an office in Leeds running on a BBC computer that had 2 chaps that could operate it - or it felt like that sometimes.

They now seem to have everything sorted.

It's now the same with the resolution deal with Friends Prov/AXA et al. They'll get it sorted eventually.

ReAssure are another chronic problem, they basically buy old books of business and appear to lose a lot of records. I had a client whereby ReAssure had misplaced about £25K of premiums he paid in when they transferred the data across and it took me 3 months to get the !!!!!!s to even admit there was an error.

Phoenix Life are getting better but they still struggle as they have 2 life offices in Liverpool and Glasgow that don't appear to be able to talk to each other.

HAL 9000 to give him his proper title was from Arthur C.Clarke's Space Odyssey series of books, later adapted into the film 2010 a space odyssey.

Unfortunately, by the real 2010 we have computers operated by people who don't understand how a pension works.

DCF_Evaluator

The promised update. Letter was sent to the CEO end July and pleased to say was formally acknowledged by a different individual shortly afterwards with the promise of a response 'in a few days' and a polite reminder of the complaints procedure.

Having heard nothing after two weeks I sent a reminder and was informed WEO '... issue sorted, just a bit of tidying needed, response shortly'. Now three weeks on still have nothing beyond inane calls (call details don't matter here) from help desk staff re the same issue, the callers being unaware of the formal investigation.

Perhaps I come from a bygone age but I was trained to respond - ideally lucidly - to any letter within 3 working days of receipt.

Incidentally, I also received a half page letter two weeks ago from the same institution re an unrelated matter. It contained a sentence so gramatically incorrect that a 9 year old would have found it comical. Out of interest I phoned the writer to specifically check that the sentence wasn't just the result of an innocent typo. The silence on the end of the line confirmed it wasn't.

Will update again when/if I hear more!

In the meantime re the title of this thread .. 'are some scheme providers struggling?' ... based on the above, yes!

PS re 'Use an IFA - let us take the headache for you ..' ...yes, good point. However, there was a separate issue with the same institution some months ago so difficult to resolve that the IFA threw up his/her hands and passed back to me to have a go. With the above issue, I would expect the same so have not even mentioned it to the IFA ( ... and I haven't even thought about whether the IFA might wish to charge for his/her time for this sort of work!)