I can't access my pension. grrrrrr

S_Baker

Many years ago I got a pension with Abbey Life which then got transferred to Phoenix Life. I then moved jobs and forgot about it. This year I was turning 55 so I looked at it and it had £50,000 in it. I wanted to take my 25% tax-free but Phoenix Life would only offer the whole lot in cash or 25% and a terrible annuity. They told me I could transfer the funds to another provider and it would take 7-10 days. My birthday was in September and I still don't have the money.

I went to AJ Bell and opened a flexible drawdown account and after 6 weeks of letters going backwards and forwards I got this from AJ Bell.

"After performing our asset acceptability checks, I can confirm that we cannot accept your holdings with Phoenix Life due to them being pooled funds that can unfortunately only be held by Phoenix Life due to preferential rates. We are unable to process the transfer of these assets but we are able to process the transfer of the fund(s) as cash. You will have to first disinvest these funds or alternatively, you can leave the funds as they are, but we are unable to accept these on our platform."

I then spoke to Phoenix Life who said they had never heard of this and they didn't do cash. Then followed a week of backward and forward with each company blaming the other. I still don't understand what this means.

Phoenix Life then recommended a company called Hub Financial Solutions so I set up another account with them and the whole silly nonsense started again but this time HFS said Phoenix Life did not give them the correct details and Phoenix Life swore they did. After I spoke to a very rude man at HFS I canceled my account with them too.

Phoenix will not tell me how to resolve this situation. I don't know what to do.

HELP

Sophie

Linton

Basically AJBell cannot accept a transfer of the funds because they have no access to the funds Phoenix use. This is not an unusual situation. So can't you sell the funds held in your Phoenix pension, converting them to cash within the pension, and transfer the cash to an AJBell SIPP? If you cant hold cash in the Phoenix pension can you replace the Phoenix funds by something that AJBell can accept?

S_Baker

Thank you for your reply and explanation. Neither Phoenix nor AJ Bell were able to explain this to me. They just kept telling me to contact the other side. Phoenix Life said they would not convert to cash. AJ Bell would not tell me what funds they would accept so I could not ask Phoenix to convert them. If I open another account with another provider how do I know this won't keep happening. Both parties told me at the outset it would be fine and take just a few days.

drumtochty

It appears to me that someone in Phoenix does not understand what they are doing.


Therfore is it possible to complain to the Pensions Ombusman as the people you are talking to in Phoenix are not up to the job.

tacpot12

I would try instructing Phoenix to sell all your holdings and see if they allow you to do this. Once you have sold all your holdings, move the cash to AJ Bell.

GDB2222

I would want an explanation of the preferential rates before cashing in the funds.

S_Baker

Do you know if this is something that happens often? I'm so downhearted by it all and now with Christmas coming, I feel like it will never get sorted out.

bluenose1

Phoenix had a massive financial penalty if took before maturity at 65 on my friends policy. Have you checked your statement for the terms and conditions?

Linton

GDB2222 wrote: »

I would want an explanation of the preferential rates before cashing in the funds.

Most likely....

Fund managers operate multiple classes for their funds which use the same underlying investments but different charges. This enables them to offer a special deal with lower charges to platforms which provide the most business. If the funds held with Phoenix are in a low charge class that AJBell do not have permission to use then AJBell cannot accept a transfer-in.


If the funds were transferred to a more comonly used class in the Phoenix pension or to another fund with which Phoenix did not have a special deal then a transfer to AJBell should be possible.

S_Baker

I spoke to Phoenix today and they said they would not convert my funds to cash. Are they obliged to convert them to cash? Is there somewhere else I could transfer that is likely to accept the money? I feel like Phoenix are forcing me into their annuity. I thought this was supposed to be pension freedom not pension prison.

Linton

S_Baker wrote: »

I spoke to Phoenix today and they said they would not convert my funds to cash. Are they obliged to convert them to cash? Is there somewhere else I could transfer that is likely to accept the money? I feel like Phoenix are forcing me into their annuity. I thought this was supposed to be pension freedom not pension prison.

Can you tell us the full name of the funds you hold in your Phoenix pension? The name should include a class normally but not always, a single letter. It should be straightforward to check whether any of the major platforms can accept them. Or if you hold multiple funds, some of which are restricted and some are not then you can ask for the money in the restricted funds to be transferred into the others.


PS platforms/pensions are not obliged to hold cash. I remember Fidelity did not some time ago.