Contracted out and in to SERPS - entitled to compensation ?

Mervyn_King

I retired 5 years ago and have been drawing state and private pension since. In 1995 I was advised to contract out of SERPS but then advised to contract back in again in1998. Am I entitled to some compensation ? If so can I do this myself - how would I start - are there forms to download and fill in etc ? Or is advisable / required to let a third party handle it ? I notice the companies dealing with this use the term ‘Were you wrongly advised to contract out etc’ - is that something that has to be proved ? Finally, can you actually lose out by trying to reclaim ?
Thank you for any responses.

ischofie1

Almost certainly not entitled to compensation as vastly more often than not this was the correct advise.
Where companies are claiming they can obtain redress it's pretty much a scam, i.e. They garnish your personal information in relation to the claim & this is what they're after whilst knowing that any such claim to compensation is without merit.

westv

Compensated for what?

msallen

What makes you think you should be entitled to compensation?

dunstonh

In 1995 I was advised to contract out of SERPS but then advised to contract back in again in1998.

Sounds like good advice.

In 1996, the SIB did a review of contracting out and found that everyone that had contracted out so far was financially better off.

However, in 1997, after Labour got into power, they started to reduce rebates (a stealth tax). So, it became less favourable to some groups.

Moving on from that, contracting in, possibly ended up being a bad decision as the changes in 2006 along with the move to the single state pension, means that most people who have contracted out are now financially better off.

Am I entitled to some compensation ?

Seeing as most people are better off because of it, what on earth makes you think that?

r is advisable / required to let a third party handle it ?

There are only a handful of companies that do this and they have a dreadful reputation and have linked sales companies. The SERPS complaint is a lead to get you to transfer your pension and they earn from the pension transfer.

The regulators own review into contracting out found a potential failure rate of just 1.5%. That is an extremely low failure rate in any business of any time.

SERPS complaints are very low. If it wasnt for the dodgy claims companies, there would be hardly any. The FOS handled just 218 complaints in 2015/16 and 112 in 2016/17 for any complaint about SERPS. This is not just the sale but could be an admin issue or taking benefits and the insurer being slow and a complaint about that. The FOS uphold rate on those complaints was just 5%.