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

peterbaker

A breath of informed and rational fresh air - thanks wooly_wombat.

As you guessed, the FT link is only viewable by those of us with a subscription unfortunately, but I have long managed to somehow retain a free subscription.

Googling"Equitable Life sale set to trigger copycat deals" does sometimes get round it (just tested it in another browser and it did - so good thinking!)

Meantime I have as forecast spent a fruitless hour on the phone to Aviva talking to three different people none of whom have a clue about the Extra Final Bonus distribution in that July 2018 document I linked to.

Not a flippin' single clue, and the last I spoke to even asked their whole team and came back and said none of them were aware of it. No-one at Aviva had told them.

So because they are generally a bit brainwashed to believe their computers are the fountain of all knowledge and there is nothing they can see on their computer linked to the policies, they venture such rot as "There is nothing on your policy which says that you qualify for final bonus so this appears not to affect you".

We even got to discussing which fund fact sheet we might both look at and I gave the PDF reference of the one I was looking at and in return got told that the one they were looking at was PDF416KB :rotfl:

You have to laugh, else make your head bleed against some convenient wall for relief :mad:

peterbaker

I just have to post an update to demonstrate just what a complete disgrace Aviva are proving to be (yet again).

I have three With Profits pension policies.

• One is ex CGNU and is a Section 32 Buy Out policy which replaced a Final Salary scheme which was wound up by greedy ex employers an the Trustees and IFAs in the employers pockets. The FS Scheme had been invested in Morley Funds (also Aviva). My Buy Out Policy is now invested in the Aviva UK Life and Pensions Old With Profits Sub Fund (not by me but by Aviva - they are the only people to touch my policy).
• Two is ex AXA Equity & Law via Friends Life and is an old end 1980s SERPs policy. It is invested in what is now called FLC Old With Profits Sub Fund which appears a some stage in recent years to have been merged with the FLC New With-Profits Sub Fund which it was deliberately separated from once upon a time when they had a different name AXA Old With-Profits Fund for example - not by me - again all changes by the provider and their conniving successors.
• Three started life as the main executive pension in a Group Scheme alongside the SERPs policy but invested in exactly the same AXA Equity and Law W-P Fund. That one was halved in value by commission snatchback when I left an employment and was automatically enrolled in a new scheme with a new employer. Those were the days when we were told "tough luck - that's the way it works". To add insult to injury the Trustees of that one then voted to accept the 2001 AXA Reattribution bribe without reference to members. That put number Three into the AXA New With-Profits Fund. Later the Trustees - a very large City outfit abdicated their duty and caused AXA/Friends Life to convert the policy into a deferred annuity without changing the policy number. Another change imposed unilaterally. No change by me.

AXA became part of what eventually was renamed Friends Life via a long and circuitous route involving use of the name Resolution at some stage. Resolution is one of those names in the industry which seems to have been deliberately moved around between different companies by canny legal peeps and company secretaries using their expertise at muddying water at Companies House.

Both Two and Three are now apparently in the FLC With Profits Sub-Fund (seemingly with no 'Old' or ' New' prefix applying to either).

Today is Wednesday. I first discovered the new notice on the website about substantial uplifts at the weekend. I spent most of Monday on and off talking to three different contact teams and one or two referred teams. I am forced to deal with three different contact teams to understand the different effects of a single website notice, the likes of which has never been published before on three separate policies, all of which are Aviva With-Profits, and two of which are in the exact same FLC With Profits SubFund.

All have eventually promised to find out what the notice means to my policies. Two now have initially ventured that it doesn't apply to my policy or they would have been told, and then had to come back to me and bite back their words. One called back to say they had been advised it was all to do with "smoothing" :rotfl: Today the other has told me they had been advised yes my invested Fund actually was affected, but that it just affects the Fund as a whole and not my individual policy :rotfl:

None have been informed of the notice internally. I am the only person to have brought it to their attention. All have gone away to get me exact answers now and have promised call backs referrals and all manner of things. All so far have fizzled out.

None knows an internal route to the horses mouth (by which I mean the W-P actuarial team and the supposedly Independent With Profits Committee who must have countenanced the release of the all encompassing 1 July 2018 document). None can answer for the effect on the single policy in their domain.

When is someone going to put a fully functional rocket up Aviva's a$$ and explode the whole sordid business of With-Profits at this company and others into the public domain once and for all? Clive Adamson at FCA tried it - look what happened to him ... has no-one else the balls to get to grips with it once more and see it through this time?