Aviva Norwich Union Friends Life AXA - Current With Profits Bonuses - can anyone decipher please?

peterbaker

I have three With Profits Policies with Aviva.

Unfortunately since the Friends Life takeover in 2015 none of them can be viewed online in any respect whatsoever.

All three of my policies were affected by Reattribution activity - two in 2001 as AXA policies (subsequently Friends Life and now Aviva) and one in 2008 as an Aviva ex Norwich Union policy.

I have on and off asked for transfer values to try to provide myself with enough information to form reasoned judgements about how to use them as part of my retirement planning.

Unfortunately, because of Reattribution effects, the goalposts of valuation have moved significantly and are I think, far more important than any discussion of what to do with the policies other than leave them where they are untouched by me.

Just today, I have stumbled upon the following webpages/documents:

Aviva Life & Pensions UK Limited Old With-Profits Sub-Fund Distribution: Your questions answered - actually that one is a two or three year old URL for customers, but is a recently partially updated webpage which now links interestingly to an adviser section of the website ...
Keeping You Informed - Distribution News

Then there are two more Bonus related documents I have found in the adviser section of Aviva's website:
With-Profits Questions and Answers 2017 End of Year Bonus Update
With-Profits Questions and Answers 2018 Mid Year Bonus Update

These documents are not easily decipherable. I do however know I have one policy in the second listed fund in the Old With Profits link list of funds which is shown as a table on the first page of 'Keeping You Informed - Distribution News'
, and I also know that until 1 July 2018, the previous figure for 'Extra Final Bonus' introduced for the first time in 2015 was +9%, so that seems now to be +10%.

I am however more interested in the FLAS and FLC fund figures, because I believe that this is the first time that Friends Life (now in the guise of Aviva) have used the concept of an 'Extra Final Bonus'.

Yesterday, I asked over the phone for a transfer valuation figure for one of those and I have just realised that I was given a figure which was not substantially different to a pre-July 2018 valuation I'd requested a while back.

According to the new Keeping You Informed - Distribution News
I might wonder if a brand new 'Extra Final Bonus' of either 57.5% or 45% should have been added by now.

I can't begin to query this until Monday at the earliest because the teams which might know about this don't work weekends.

Does anyone know what the recent changes actually signify?

+57.5% or +45% on a pot which has never before attracted such a bonus is a significant change.

Brynsam

peterbaker wrote: »

I can't begin to query this until Monday at the earliest because the teams which might know about this don't work weekends.

This sounds as if it has been going on for some time. Today is Saturday; what's so dreadful about waiting a couple of days and then asking them to clarify?

peterbaker

Oh sure, Brynsam, stuff has been going on for some time. £Billions of the stuff of which a small part is mine. Long term business I think they once called it

No, but seriously, what has not been going on for some time is what I discovered today i.e. the revelations of three recent bonus documents, especially the first, so could any one here give me the benefit of some deciphering expertise in readiness to discuss with someone at Aviva on Monday, please? For example, what would be the difference in effect on a transfer valuation between an Asset Share Uplift and a Pay-Out Uplift?

Last time Aviva introduced a significant change to their distribution of bonuses was in 2015 when they first introduced a 9% extra final bonus on pay-out of ex CGNU policies I think, and it was some months before the contact centre staff had any real clue about what that actually meant on a specific case!

As of this evening I think I have established that my ex FL policies are in the £6bn FLC Sub Fund, but with no apparent +45% added that I can see, I have a feeling the transfer valuation I was given yesterday was only about 31% too low, but who knows with the gobbledegook that passes for proper WP documentation ? That's why an expert opinion ahead of what will probably otherwise be an inconclusive phone call Monday would be useful.

Any Aviva WP experts round here?

PS Just found another relevant document: 'With-Profits Customer News - 27 July 2018.' The examples given there seem to imply that the massive percentages mentioned in the original table for FLC do not in fact make much difference to year-on-year valuations - more of the usual WP smoke and mirrors I guess :mad:

peterbaker

Oh well, the With-Profits experts must've all died off. I think it is a subject beyond the capabilities of most IFAs and regulatory peeps, and therein may lie the reason that With-Profits providers are generally a law unto themselves.

Here's an interesting and extremely authoritative 23 year old paper and peer level discussion of "asset share" relative to With-Profits (for those with the inclination or motivation):
'ASSET SHARES AND THEIR USE IN THE MANAGEMENT OF A WITH-PROFITS FUND' (WARNING: LINK immediately downloads a 4MB PDF file of 86 pages)

So there's a prize for whomever can use this latest paper, pre-linked papers and any existing knowledge to second guess what a 45% Asset Share Uplift means relative to a quoted transfer value two days ago which was an increase of just 5.6% compared to one 18 months ago.

Anyone? Or is it all too much?

dunstonh

Perhaps the lack of responses is due to your level of trolling on the forums and people choosing not to reply to you. You reap what you sow.

peterbaker

dunstonh wrote: »

Perhaps the lack of responses is due to your level of trolling on the forums and people choosing not to reply to you. You reap what you sow.

Well I note that in just the last 24 hours one or more of your anti-peterbaker posts has disappeared, dunstonh.

There is a big difference between you and I. I am not trolling, I am whistle-blowing on nefarious activity of a very substantial segment of the pensions industry - a part of the industry which I believe that I probably understand better than you, or at least better than you are ever prepared to admit on these forums. Yet you are the IFA, not I.

How can this be so?

Anyone reading your posts over the years can fathom that you are quite atune to Aviva. So as an IFA constantly posting in this particular sub-forum, don't you think you owe it the thousands of With-Profits pension holders who may from time to time come here looking for pointers, especially those whom you personally may have directed into With-Profits funds in an earlier era, to comment on the multiple shady goings on at the providers?

dunstonh

Well I note that in just the last 24 hours one or more of your anti-peterbaker posts has disappeared, dunstonh.

It is normal for the board to remove posts saying that a report has been made or have content linking to the reported posts. My one post on that thread removed only said I was reporting you.

What is your excuse for all your posts that have been removed from it? Ignoring the ones that the spam button is conveniently removing.

I am whistle-blowing

Hilarious. A joker and a troller.

I believe that I probably understand better than you

You can keep telling yourself that if it helps.

peterbaker

Post something useful to benefit Aviva With-Profits policyholders please, dunstonh.

Aviva totally obfuscate what they are doing with With-Profits policy funds and that means they are hiding the full accounting for billions of policyholders' money and we long suffering policyholders who know enough to smell the rats also know that Aviva have already sequestrated (or should we say "reattributed"?) £billions of policyholders' With-Profits money to give to shareholders or bail out their own staff pension fund or pay misselling claims, with your help, I might add, since rather astonishingly, you were advocating here on MSE in 2009 that ignorant and thus unfortunate policyholders should take bribes offered by Aviva dressed up as innocent windfalls in that shameful "reattribution" exercise.

Something like 87% of all the bribed policyholders took your advice and/or other clueless advice like it at the time (I am being kind) ... more or less the same proportion as AXA (which became Friends Life which surprise surprise became part of Aviva in 2015) managed to trick in similar manner in 2001, which Which? Magazine knew was trickery, but could not convince the clueless judiciary and/or clueless or colluding establishment. In both cases the WP fund managers and actuaries tricked the High Court but the equally clueless FSA too! :mad:

So I ask again - in July 2018 and beyond, what is the exact meaning and upshot to transfer values of an 'Asset Share Uplift' in the Aviva case, dunstonh? You have a chance to be useful to WP policyholders who have had Aviva's hand dipping our pockets for far too long.

There is hardly a single policyholder, other than insiders, who understands the term amongst those with funds languishing somewhere the £billions comprising the various With-Profits "sub-funds" Aviva and Friends Life have continually created to cover their tracks. The FLC WP Sub Fund alone is some £6.1bn declared at some date in 2017. Who knows what had been sucked out of it before then, or what is still in it but not declared?

I don't think there is a single IFA who understands it either, or is willing to explain it in a public forum. Will you prove me wrong or just continue to bluster?

PaulCooper

I saw this original post last night & when I had 5 mins was going to try and reply constructively as I've got one of those old Sun Life, Axa, Friends Life, Aviva policies and I think I've got a handle on the relevant bonuses. Looking at the above exchanges I'll now decline. What a shame that an otherwise very constructive forum degenerates.
Hopefully you'll get your answers from the horses mouth tomorrow
Paul

peterbaker

PaulCooper wrote: »

I saw this original post last night & when I had 5 mins was going to try and reply constructively as I've got one of those old Sun Life, Axa, Friends Life, Aviva policies and I think I've got a handle on the relevant bonuses. Looking at the above exchanges I'll now decline. What a shame that an otherwise very constructive forum degenerates.
Hopefully you'll get your answers from the horses mouth tomorrow
Paul

Hope you do too Paul if you haven't called them yet about the actual effect on your own.

If you are policyholder that took the 2001 bribe then the answer you get may be different to mine, but who knows with so much gobbledegook published by Aviva as a smokescreen, instead of a proper centralised online individual pensions portal with hard and totally complete personal contract data linked to our NIno, such as the ones all pension providers must (for the last decade or so) participate in if doing business in other, rather more clued-in and upright, as opposed to habitually now very bent, European countries.

Good luck!

PS The forum is constructive for the few, but rarely for the many except on general questions on GMP and contracting out where xylophone and Snow Man are superb.

But why so little on WP except the occasional moans about Equitable Life (the City peeps insurer of choice at one stage), and glossed over suggestions that WP policies should be transferred into something else if they have no "guarantee" within them? What about the dead cert guarantee that the providers are hiding enormous surpluses in the estate, hoping that we'll transfer out too cheaply?

Why do you think both you and I have policies in possibly the same WP funds now? It's because that's where the masses were invested almost by default once upon a time. That is why the WP funds are so enormous - there are so many of us invested in them as the ordinary man's cautious investment that doesn't go down, but grows steadily via "smoothing", that's why. And why do you think such a large proportion have ended up at Aviva and now commentators have suggested they might not touch WP with a bargepole?

Where are the useful WP pointers in this forum? Was this really it ? Was WP obsolete in 2009? THat doesn't say much for your policyholder acumen in 2018 or for mine Paul if that IFA "pointer" was valid.

woolly_wombat

peterbaker wrote: »

Where are the useful WP pointers in this forum?

I don't know anything about Aviva WP Reattribution, but I do know that I'm glad I didn't take up ELAS's earlier WP capital distribution offer in 2016.

Here's Pinchers take on it (my emboldening):
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5448467/equitable-life-with-profits-capital-distribution-letter

Just got a letter, dated 12th Apri 2016, which seems to say they (Equitable Life) are giving me 35%, but they might take it away any time.


As far as I understand it, this is what used to be called the Terminal Bonus, so if I had £10,000 in the policy on maturity, they will add £3,500 to the redemption figure.
The 35% can go and down.


The letter talks about "the world economy is once again in turmoil.....".



Two paragraphs worth of scare tactics, followed by "it is not unthinkable that the capital distribution may have to reduce."
I take it to mean: "Why don't you take the money and run, before we change our minds and reduce the Terminal Bonus."
It's got a certain similarity to the discounted mortgage balance if you redeem the mortgage early deals during the credit crunch.


There is an AGM next month, so there is some sort of manoeuvring going on. Is it some kind of veiled threat that they will be reducing the 35% at the AGM?


Plenty of time till I have to redeem. You guys can leave. I'll be the last Tontine member who stayed, and clean up on the reserve.

This FT article might also be of interest:
https://www.ft.com/content/eee4e266-8294-11e8-96dd-fa565ec55929

Google "Equitable Life sale set to trigger copycat deals" if unable to view.

I'm now hoping to eventually get nearer to 70% capital redistribution from Equitable Life.

.