Transferring a pension

harkin_2

I wrote to Norwich Union on the 1st August enclosing all of the transfer paperwork that I had been supplied by AXA. Today is the 2nd November and the transfer has still not happended. AXA are saying they haven't received the sign off from the pension trustees, although they say they sent it 2 weeks ago.

Do pension companies deliberately drag their heels when dealing with individual transfers. I have used a broker for other pension transfers & it has taken a couple of weeks.

EdInvestor

harkin wrote: »

Do pension companies deliberately drag their heels when dealing with individual transfers. I have used a broker for other pension transfers & it has taken a couple of weeks.

Many do: but there is a wide variation in efficiency between different companies.NU has a poor reputation, so does L&G, Standard Life is a lot better, don't know about AXA.

dunstonh

Norwich union are very quick on transfers and their service levels are not too bad on that front at this time. AXA has a worse service standard at this time.

Your problem is that you probably havent completed the transaction the right way. Normally, the receiving scheme would write to the transferring scheme not you. NU would then issue discharge forms for you to sign. If AXA havent contacted NU, then that could be a hold up.

Also, what type of pension is it? If its a occuaptional money purchase pension scheme with NU, then NU dont do the paperwork. The administrators do and many administrators are slow. The paperwork needs to go to them and not NU.

The easiest way to do a transfer is to send all the forms to the receiving scheme and not try and do it yourself.

libra10

My OH is in the process of transferring a pension annuity from HSBC to Norwich Union. His retirement date is mid November but so far everything seems to be going according to plan. HSBC have sent the pension pot and we presume Norwich Union will start paying his pension some time after his retirement date.

dunstonh

My OH is in the process of transferring a pension annuity from HSBC to Norwich Union.

You cannot transfer an annuity. From what it sounds like, your OH is doing an open market option to purchase a lifetime annuity from NU. NU can either backdate to a defined start date if the transfer takes a bit longer than expected or they can use the date the funds are recieved.

TRUSt_NO_1_2

Yes is the answer.
I had weeks of delays .. lost paperwork ,we need our 'transfer blah blah blah' form completing.Blah,blah,blah.
How long should it take a company to carry out a simple transaction that they do thosands of times a year ?
If phoned FSA to ask them why they do not issue generic forms to be used by all companies in pension transfers and set strict time limits for completion.
They were not interested.
I resorted to driving and delivering forms by hand because I could not trust them to perform a simple task efficiently on both sides of the transfer.

HannaB

Technically, the deadline for pension transfers is 3 months. So unfortunately, NU are still in date.

Agree with the idea of generic forms, it would certainly make my job a lot easier (corporate IFA admin support). Or even if every provider had the same procedure, that would be a good place to start!!

End rant.