Strange letter from Arriva

gmatkin

Has anyone else had a letter from Aviva asking for details of any accounts they might have with the company?

I have to say if I had received an email asking the same question, I'd discount it as particularly transparent spam of phishing. On this occasion, I wonder whether they genuinely don't know what accounts folks have with them? Or is it that if we don't claim, they'll just keep the money?

I've had quite a few jobs over my nearly 40-year career, and the funds do get moved about between administrators - and it's baffling of course. In my case I think any account with Aviva would be an old occupational pension - probably one of the several that have written to say they're not doing very well.

So... should I fill in this odd looking letter and send it back (it has a likely lookng Arriva address in Norwich), or regard it as a bit dodgy and ignore it?

Gavin

payless

Arriva
Is a bus and train company

Aviva is the investment/ insurance co. Ex GA, CU, NU etc.


Give us the address and someone will know if It's legit

gmatkin

The address on the prepaid envelope is Aviva, PO Box 520, Norwich, NR1 3WG.

Thanks Payless! Gavin

lol_omg_wtf

seems legit
http://www.aviva.co.uk/personal-pension/existing-customers/contact.html

gterr

Yes, husband got one last week. It said something like "We believe you have an account with us...." and asked for some details. Husband had a small ISA (PEP even?) with Norwich Union, which became Aviva, but this was transferred elsewhere about 10 years ago. Still, we've filled in the personal details, as requested, just in case there's a pot of gold somewhere.....

gmatkin

If it is legitimate, it's certainly very odd.

If I don't put my hand up, do I lose any savings? If not small scale scammery, is it big company corporate style scammery, I wonder?

And then there is the small challenge of having to remember all my previous employers names and addresses. I think the addresses will beat me, but I can name the towns and counties they were in...

Gavin

greenglide

Aviva can identify you by your name and NINO. It looks as if this is a "have we found you" letter after Aviva have traced you.

At some point they must have lost contact and now they want to be sure they have found the right person. You arent an age which is "significant" for a pension, are you?

dunstonh

Quite normal and legit. The address for Aviva is correct.

Debt_Free_Chick

greenglide wrote: »

Aviva can identify you by your name and NINO. It looks as if this is a "have we found you" letter after Aviva have traced you.

At some point they must have lost contact and now they want to be sure they have found the right person. You arent an age which is "significant" for a pension, are you?

Agree with this.

Worth replying as it's likely you have something with Aviva.

The letter is "cagey" as they want to be sure that the right person replies, not some "chancer" trying cash in to something they're not entitled to.

Malthusian

gmatkin wrote: »

If it is legitimate, it's certainly very odd.

If I don't put my hand up, do I lose any savings? If not small scale scammery, is it big company corporate style scammery, I wonder?

How exactly would they scam you? If they found you had some money you'd forgotten about, the easiest way to scam you out of it would be to simply not tell you and pocket the cash. Not send you a letter about it.

If you don't put your hand up, any forgotten account you had would just remain where it was until such time as you did decide to claim it. Forgotten deposit accounts are eventually distributed to charity (although the owner can still turn up and claim it from the reclaim fund, even after it has been distributed) but I don't think this happens with life policies, unit trusts or other investments.

If you are suspicious of an "advance fee fraud" scam - "You have £50,000 unclaimed with Aviva but before we can send it you will need to pay us a £1,000 exit fee" - then you are right to be suspicious, but there is already ample evidence in this thread that this letter is legitimate.

agarnett

dunstonh wrote: »

Quite normal and legit. The address for Aviva is correct.

Yes - large company scammery - quite normal - but legit? It depends ...

Almost certainly this is a profit speculative venture by Aviva based on the law as they see it with regard to "untraceable" accounts. They are going through certain motions because it suits their profit motive, and they can then claim to have followed a "rule", not because they care about you.

Aviva own Friends Life now and in fact are run now by a Friends Life chappie whose company sent me one such letter a couple of years ago. I hadn't moved. They had simply de-linked my contact details from one of my policies for reasons still best known to themselves, and then moved it into the limboland where letters like the OP received are sent out to satisfy a particular legal or regulatory requirement prior to them confiscating your assets for another purpose (not immediately, but if you don't act, then maybe in a few year's time according to "the rules").

Basically it means your account is under threat of being de-linked from your control if you do not act to make it very plain you own it, but it probably doesn't make that very clear.

The way the law stands in the UK, these stupid limbolands are part of the landscape.

In a properly developed western society we would have government computer systems which fully link all our financial and utility and citizenship records via our unique identifier, our NINo. If we move, we notify just a single address change, and then all the finance houses and utility companies computers are immediately and automatically updated with our new address. Simple as ...

But no ... the UK finance industry has a voracious appetite for lost and found funds which its customers have seemingly forgotten, so instead of a proper system where there is no ambiguity, we have deliberate ambiguity built-in and driven by deliberate requirements for duplicate data entry into a multitude of different systems which anyone with any nouse in current day business knows is a recipe for countless errors.


Actually I have first hand experience of a second one too - from the Pru. Also a situation where the policyholder hasn't moved ... for 50 years! And yes, they required hoops to be jumped through to prove identity, even though the policy (and old endowment savings policy) was still being funded monthly via the same direct debit from the same bank account.

As I said, you don't even have to have moved for this nasty little system to have been triggered.


Errors are good like Greed is good.

Errors helps them duck and dive ... it's what we do in UK, right?