Willis Towers Watson 1 June 2017 at 5:26PM edited 30 November -1 at 12:00AM in Pensions, Annuities & Retirement Planning 26 replies 12.4K views

fjh

Just found out the administration of my FS pension is moving to this company this year
Any one know if I will be able to view say Transfer value online?
And what service is like?
Albeit I don't have a choice in the matter .
Thanks

worried_jim

We started using them at Lloyds Banking Group last November to administer our staff pensions and so far I have been impressed.

It's a great easy to use portal and very easy to see fund performance. I can clearly see the value of all my funds.

PeacefulWaters

fjh wrote: »

Just found out the administration of my FS pension is moving to this company this year
Any one know if I will be able to view say Transfer value online?
And what service is like?
Albeit I don't have a choice in the matter .
Thanks

CETV was sent by post and took about eight days to arrive the three times I needed one.

Lots of good online functionality but not instant CETV.

craig1912

My Wife is with Lloyds and has nothing but problems with them. They have been shocking- taking weeks to respond to any FS query. Last time it took a complaint for them to respond. Latest has taken six weeks to give her some options at an early retirement date. Very poor

GSP

Peacefulwaters, I am able to get a CETV quote online from the system each day.

Could be there are different sites depending what institution you are in, but if you see "select an event", it will be in there after a few clicks.

TcpnT

The only quick response I have had from them is when I requested a CETV. Otherwise they are painfully slow to respond to any enquiry. I find there is more chance of getting a helpful response if you phone. I have also been misinformed by them several times about details of benefits. Seems especially bad when trying to pin down accurate info about DB scheme. I get the distinct impression that their administrators are trying to deal with multiple DB clients at once and sometimes get the details mixed up between them.

My company is in the process of moving scheme admin across to Mercer

TcpnT

My DB pension is deferred and it has never been possible to get an online CETV from WTW

MEM62

A very reputable and long standing company.

Willis were the insurance brokers for the Titanic :-)

agarnett

They are very big and ugly and no doubt rub shoulders with Goldman Sachs and others who are also extremely interested in manipulating our pension funds from all angles imagineable.

WTW employ a mixed bag of humans (I can say that because I plug in to them via a number of diverse teams handling different pension schemes in which I have an interest).

Some of those humans are nice people who behave in pro-active and caring ways when they can get away with it against the prevailing corporate cultural trends (generally at the lower levels of course), but no doubt WTW will be running those types down and in preference employing Artificial Intelligence more and more in order to manipulate funding strategy for their corporate principals using such things as "requests for CETVs" as movable dials - meaning that depending on the scheme and whose motives it serves most, you'll get access to info quick or slow, and you'll get CETVs which are generous or not generous, and you'll find your pension gets used as a comfy cushion and flak-jacket for corporate and other big-money protection when markets get wobbly.

Yer pays your money and yer takes your [STRIKE]choice[/STRIKE] chance

GSP

Found out from them if you can get access to their online system and run off the CETV figure with supporting papers, this is also good for 3 months.

Saves requesting a pack and paying maybe £300 a time if you request a year before your last figure.

Obtaining the figure daily and saving the report, you can also choose the highest figure to be used for when the transfer goes through.

TcpnT

They obviously provide a range different online facilities to different clients - for my scheme all I can see is the original deferred value of my DB pension but no other useful options