Waiting for info on putting DB pension into payment

Albermarle

If you make a request to your DB administrator,  in relation to starting taking your DB pension in say two months time , how long would you expect them to take to respond ?
The administrator is Mercer , who have been mentioned on this forum before as being very slow . 

TVAS

You need to phone them. Member queries are treated as priority over IFA queries and your case should be even more so as you want to claim the pension. I know this because I worked for an IFA on a contract last year doing DB pension review and I sent them an email which went 8 weeks unanswered, in the end I asked the member to contact them to give us (IFA) the information.


Are you taking benefits at scheme retirement age and do they have your current address. If so their system should produce a report so that they calculate and check your benefits in time.

All third party administrators are appallingly slow. They never have enough staff, they are poorly paid and overworked.

xylophone

I think two months' notice is pushing it, particularly under current conditions.



If I were you I would ring Mercer and ask about their time scales.

Thrugelmir

Is this your NRA or have you decided to call it a day? 

Marcon

Albermarle said:

If you make a request to your DB administrator,  in relation to starting taking your DB pension in say two months time , how long would you expect them to take to respond ?
The administrator is Mercer , who have been mentioned on this forum before as being very slow . 

What exactly have you requested (or are you planning to request) - an illustration of the benefits you might expect to receive, the necessary paperwork to make a formal application for your pension, both of those or something else?

If you are retiring before NRA, you may well need consent to do so, which could slow up the whole process.

Albermarle

What exactly have you requested (or are you planning to request) - an illustration of the benefits you might expect to receive

This , with a suggested first payment date in June .

f you are retiring before NRA, you may well need consent to do so, which could slow up the whole process.

Before the NRA

I think two months' notice is pushing it, particularly under current conditions.

I thought it might be, but thought it might push them along a bit .

It is not that critical when I get it , it is only a minority  part of my planned retirement income, and I am still working until July anyway . I'm taking it 2.5 years early mainly for LTA reasons .

Sounds like I will have to be pro active and give them a call .

Marcon

Albermarle said:

What exactly have you requested (or are you planning to request) - an illustration of the benefits you might expect to receive

This , with a suggested first payment date in June .

f you are retiring before NRA, you may well need consent to do so, which could slow up the whole process.

Before the NRA

I think two months' notice is pushing it, particularly under current conditions.

I thought it might be, but thought it might push them along a bit .

It is not that critical when I get it , it is only a minority  part of my planned retirement income, and I am still working until July anyway . I'm taking it 2.5 years early mainly for LTA reasons .

Sounds like I will have to be pro active and give them a call .

In normal circumstances, the scheme has two months to provide you with this information. These are not normal circumstances, as we all know - and the fact they've been going on for over a year doesn't mean it has made the task of the administrators any easier.

If you are applying for early retirement, and the administrators need to get consent from the trustees and/or the employer, they have no control over how quickly they get a response.

Ringing them isn't going to move you up the queue of members waiting for their requests to be dealt with - you will simply take someone away from dealing with that queue! Unless a request is genuinely urgent (e.g. serious ill health), the only fair way for administrators to deal with the backlog is on a 'when request was received' basis.

As it isn't critical that you get your pension in June, you could save yourself quite a lot of frustration by simply exercising some patience.

Albermarle

Marcon said:

Albermarle said:

What exactly have you requested (or are you planning to request) - an illustration of the benefits you might expect to receive

This , with a suggested first payment date in June .

f you are retiring before NRA, you may well need consent to do so, which could slow up the whole process.

Before the NRA

I think two months' notice is pushing it, particularly under current conditions.

I thought it might be, but thought it might push them along a bit .

It is not that critical when I get it , it is only a minority  part of my planned retirement income, and I am still working until July anyway . I'm taking it 2.5 years early mainly for LTA reasons .

Sounds like I will have to be pro active and give them a call .

In normal circumstances, the scheme has two months to provide you with this information. These are not normal circumstances, as we all know - and the fact they've been going on for over a year doesn't mean it has made the task of the administrators any easier.

If you are applying for early retirement, and the administrators need to get consent from the trustees and/or the employer, they have no control over how quickly they get a response.

Ringing them isn't going to move you up the queue of members waiting for their requests to be dealt with - you will simply take someone away from dealing with that queue! Unless a request is genuinely urgent (e.g. serious ill health), the only fair way for administrators to deal with the backlog is on a 'when request was received' basis.

As it isn't critical that you get your pension in June, you could save yourself quite a lot of frustration by simply exercising some patience.

Thanks for the advice . Having never done it before, I had no real idea of timescales . At least I got the ball rolling with time to spare .

Thrugelmir

Inflation linked "investments" may prove to be beneficial holdings in the short term.  

Albermarle

Just an update to this .
It has taken 7.5 weeks just to get an illustration from Mercer.
This has included two chasers on their website ( impossible to phone them - just sends you to the website ) - contact with ex employer,  who also chased them ( still no result) - further contact from ex employer at more senior level and eventually it arrived.
The usual stuff about Covid /working from home trotted out . I think if I had not had good contacts with my ex employer I would still be waiting until Xmas !
Hopefully if I now apply to take the pension , it will not take as long.

saver_ali

Thanks for the update. I didn’t see your original post. My husband has had awful problems with Mercer in the past, transferring a DC pension out. His DB pension is with them too, and he’s possibly taking it a year early, in 18 months. I’m dreading it!
They now have a useful online tool, OneView, which enables you to get instant illustrations. It saves you having to speak to a person, but I’m not sure if it’s available for every pension scheme. 

Good luck if you decide to take your pension. I’ll be interested to hear how you get on. 😀🤞