Pension Adminsitrator problem!

dunstonh

The point is, this could be avoided by making some attempt to trace the pension holder.

And a trace will be carried out. However, it will not be immediate as the vast majority of people will solve it the minute the money it turned off. If there is no response within a period then they will employ the services of a tracing company. That tracing company can take some months.

I'm guessing most pensions are paid by direct debit into the pension holder's bank account - I can't believe it's that hard to trace them from there?

That data is not in the public domain.

Bring back the good-old days of PPI & pension miss-selling, not to mention LIBOR...

....and when families and friends were closer than they are today and people took responsibility for their actions or inactions......

LHW99

And on the other side - when more people died younger, and did not live with early stages of dementia, which are hard to separate from normal aging, and financial transaction were frequestly done through a local office who knew not only the member but their family etc ..........................

PensionTech

We all agree that the company had a responsibility to try to track your mother down, and I'm not sure that you've shown that they didn't. If they didn't, then go ahead and complain about that (although I still don't think it means you have a right to any compensation). But as we've tried to explain, it is indeed much harder than you envisage. And of course you can't get information from the bank - have you never heard of the Data Protection Act? If I paid some money into your account and then called up the bank to demand that they give me your address and phone number, you'd be livid if they complied. It's illegal because it's a huge fraud risk.

Look, none of us has a vested interest in protecting your administrator. We all come on here to genuinely help people using our industry knowledge and experience. I've happily encouraged people on here to complain about their administrator when they've done something wrong, several times. But this is not one of those cases. They suspended your mother's pension: with good reason. They couldn't locate her immediately: because it's not possible to locate anyone immediately (try it yourself one day!). As much as agarnett seems to want us to riot on the streets for a central citizens' register (which I'm all for, from an administration point of view - it'd genuinely make administration so, so much easier! - but what a nightmare from a civil rights point of view), administrators aren't to blame for that either. And nobody is making money by suspending pensions, least of all administrators. If a pension is suspended and then reinstated, the arrears get paid to them. If a pension is suspended while a person is still alive but the person then dies before it gets reinstated, the arrears are paid to the estate. The administrative costs associated with suspending, reinstating, tracing etc. massively outweigh any benefit from hanging onto the money for a couple of months. This isn't some conspiracy.

It makes me sad that you're happier to listen to someone who, frothing at the mouth, clearly has an enormous irrational chip on his shoulder against everyone in financial services and the pensions industry (whom he today wants to blame for what he sees as a failure by the government to provide an efficient computerised registry of the entire nation) than to people who are genuinely and kindly trying to explain to you, using common sense and logic, the background to a practice that you didn't previously understand.

gfplux

I have not read all the posts but this is my personal experience.
I have one pension provider who checks annually by post if I am alive. I have to sign a form and return it to them.
Very easy and I am happy about it.
We are too quick to complain when something goes wrong. We should be happy with these security checks.

RichandJ

Womblesw20 wrote: »

Jem16 - I agree that it is only fair for the recipient to payback any overpayments due. The point is, this could be avoided by making some attempt to trace the pension holder. I'm guessing most pensions are paid by direct debit into the pension holder's bank account - I can't believe it's that hard to trace them from there?


RichardJ - appreciate your comforting sympathy around my hurt feelings here. I guess that, as "that's the way it works" we should just accept the practice. Thanks for this very profound insight. In fact, we should all take this attitude when it comes to financial services. Bring back the good-old days of PPI & pension miss-selling, not to mention LIBOR...

Without trying to be 'nasty' here, set up your own third party pension administration firm. Try to make a profit & then try to get pension scheme trustees to agree to a trace of every single potential death case with the associated costs.

Good luck.

agarnett

We are just customers and you are a pensions administrator we assume? Have you ever set up a third party pension administration firm RichandJ?

No ?

Then why the deuce ... are you suggesting the OP try it?

And to the poster who couldn't bear to contemplate central government computers that actually worked ? What's your real problem ?

Do you think somehow think data scientists as a breed are more fallible than pension administrators floundering in the dark? I don't think so.

The only problem with computing is the people using them, not the people designing the systems.

The problem is the same as was taught to me nearly 50 years ago now

GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT.

Personally I'd like the GARBAGE OUT of the City and self serving administration outsource contract companies and some real standards returning.

jem16

agarnett wrote: »

And to the poster who couldn't bear to contemplate central government computers that actually worked ? What's your real problem ?

I have no problem but you clearly do.

Do you think somehow think data scientists as a breed are more fallible than pension administrators floundering in the dark? I don't think so.

Nothing to do with data scientists and all to do with technology. It's not infallible - it breaks down, it can be hacked and attacked by people who have nothing better to do. Look at the problems on here last week with many unable to use the site without constant issues. One central computer system that controls everything just gives a bigger headache.

The only problem with computing is the people using them, not the people designing the systems.

You don't say? I would never have guessed. Must let my two Business Analyst sons know that. I'm sure it will make their jobs so much easier to know that they can just blame the consumer when it all goes wrong. :cool:

bigadaj

agarnett wrote: »

We are just customers and you are a pensions administrator we assume? Have you ever set up a third party pension administration firm RichandJ?

No ?

Then why the deuce ... are you suggesting the OP try it?

And to the poster who couldn't bear to contemplate central government computers that actually worked ? What's your real problem ?

Do you think somehow think data scientists as a breed are more fallible than pension administrators floundering in the dark? I don't think so.

The only problem with computing is the people using them, not the people designing the systems.

The problem is the same as was taught to me nearly 50 years ago now

GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT.

Personally I'd like the GARBAGE OUT of the City and self serving administration outsource contract companies and some real standards returning.

The government doesn't exactly have a good record at installing large computer systems though does it now?

RichandJ

bigadaj wrote: »

The government doesn't exactly have a good record at installing large computer systems though does it now?

Glad I have the garnett idiot on ignore. He doesn't have a clue.

agarnett

Doesn't have a clue about what, RichandJ? P|ss poor pension administration? Data science? Standards in business ? How to toe the company line and survive? Ah yes, I'll admit to the one obvious deficiency identifying me in that list.

Yes bigadaj, the government doesn't have a good record on commissioning computer systems because of the crooks that masquerade as third party outsource specialists who in fact are just greedy selfish pigs with snouts they can't wean from the cost-plus trough.

Governments are weak and the Capitas of this world are just too ugly and strong.

And having two business analyst sons, jem16, is that like having two Jags? Or maybe two silver pistols in your sorry a$$ holsters?

No offence to your dear sons, but business analysts are two a penny my friend. For every trader in the City there are three business analysts - they get by with a kind of failsafe tripartite voting system which is a barstewardisation of something learned in the 80s and 90s after programmers who worked on original Airbus coding found jobs in the City programming around Oracle databases, and so brushed shoulders with City IT managers who shared what they learned with their armies of BAs.

So before implementing anything, 3 BAs agree that either all three will decide the same routine will serve a tried and tested use case for the trader to be able to immediately employ (because the trader won't say - he or she just "expects" it to work), and then they implement it (a kind of all in it together type hysteria which for self preservation reasons no-one writes down exactly who decided). If it should happen to go wrong it gets blamed on a stray coding error from outsourced coders, or else it's a user self-training error. Alternatively if they can't all agree, the two who do agree decide, whilst the other calls in sick, and if it goes t`ts up it's the trader's boss who gets the blame because he or she signed off on it. But generally that one can be overused ...

These are corporate and industry culture issues. They have nothing to do with what's a good idea and what's not. They have to do with dog eat dog, pack mentality and survival.

Technology rarely breaks down unless a human is negligent. Had you not noticed? For the last thirty years we have been sending two engined airliners across the Atlantic with little hope of any quick landing if an engine fails. There's a reason for EROPS/ETOPS. It's reliable technology, and it all started a very long time ago with Alcock and Brown in 1919. I actually have an original letter of apology from an administrator to Arthur Whitten Brown for c¤cking something up!

My four year old iPhone hasn't missed a beat despite it being dropped on concrete three times, and having had amateur but attentive surgery without anaesthetic in order to fit two replacement fronts, and one replacement back - each time achieved in minutes by my son (yep got one of those too and a couple of the other variety). As it happens - a son who isn't a business analyst because his Dad had been there and done that round about the time he was born :rotfl: Fixing stuff is for kicks in a little spare time when he isn't studying or working. He is becoming a leader not a follower so he will change things and do good in this world.

I am typing this on a six year old laptop which was bought in Aldi. It came out of the box with Windows Vista but long ago I easily upgraded to Windows 7 and again, it hasn't missed a beat. On it I create spreadsheets which check the responses I receive from people who think I should be grateful they are in charge of looking after my money, and then I point out the inconsistencies and errors which they seem to make continuously. I am glad I started querying them before they started telling me the terms for retirement.

My laptop gets attacked regularly of course with malicious virus attempts almost every day, and my inbox sometimes gets clogged by idiot administrators who think it is reasonable to send 75MB attachments without

1. any attempt at reducing the size of the pdfs they are trying to send, or even
2. first notifying customers,

but hey, does that keep me from using it to pull you down a peg over the internet? Of course not. It still runs nicely and I don't need to change the technology because it is ... altogether now ... RELIABLE 21st CENTURY TECHNOLOGY!

So your imagined inevitable technology breakdown is no reason afterall to stick your head in the sand and suggest that government should not have a compulsory central computer system. That'd be the one which automatically and instantly populates other systems' databases with relevant updated citizen personal data - removing all weak excuses for any pension administrator losing track of their pensionists in one foul swoop.

Of course we already have the government central system, but the corporates have refused point blank to link their systems. Too many secrets and rinky dinks to risk letting government eyes in ? Maybe it'll take the FBI to finally get sense to prevail in the UK.

Oh well, I guess till then, we'll have to do it the hard way so the corporates have a few more years targeting easy money. UK plc's corporates need it more than dumb OAPs and carers who don't even miss their own money. Suckers.