wrong financial advice concerning annuity pension

tooldle

What you say may well be good advice at the time. None of us can say more, as you don’t seem to have the basic details.
Did your dad pay into only one pension scheme? Have you any correspondance from the scheme, dated around the time of dad's retirement?
key here is the purpose of the financial advice. Was the advice given on grounds of how to make best use of dad’s surplus cash, or was it how to make best use of existing pension savings for both mum and dad. What action if any followed and who took that action?

Daniel54

Was your father's work pension Defined Benefit ( which will have included a widow's pension?)

Or was the only pension on demise the single life annuity ?

Unfortunately there are easily found examples of men (in particular) buying single life annuities as the returns are significantly higher up to the point the annuitant dies - and then  there is nothing for the widow.

If your father was misadvised you will need to find a way to  dig out the paperwork. On the way, he will almost certainly have signed an agreement to the actions he was taking.

That does not imply that the advice was not wrong.

A second life annuity would have left a reduced annual income to your mother ( there is no pot ) but so far  we can only guess how your father came to agree what he will have signed up to.

p00hsticks

mumdoeseverything said:

The money came from a joint savings account.
My father was not working at this time due to ill health.

This doesn't make sense to me, as there are usually limits on how much you can contribute to a pension if you aren't actually working.  
As toodle has suggested it might be worth re-posting over on the Pensions board, but first get more precise details about exactly what type of pension he had and what options he was offered when he came to take that pension at 65.

Malthusian

tooldle said:

What you say may well be good advice at the time. None of us can say more, as you don’t seem to have the basic details.

If the OP is correct that the dad bought a single life annuity despite having an impaired life expectancy and wanting to provide an income for both of them, it was bad advice.

Did the annuity rate take into account his health issues? (The annuity provider will be able to confirm whether it did. If they keep withholding information, the OP should make a formal complaint.) Even if it did that doesn't make it good advice when they wanted aj joint life annuity.

Daniel54 is right that it used to be a fairly common tragedy of a widow thinking that an annuity would continue to her and then finding that her late husband had bought a single life annuity because the rate was higher. (By fairly common I mean it was regular fodder for the Daily Mail money pages.) But that story used to be more common prior to 2015, when annuities were the standard way to draw a pension fund, and this apparently happened in 2017. So I suspect there is more to this.

(Nowadays, men who just want to spend as much as they can of their pension and don't care about their spouse just cash it in and spend it.)

p00hsticks

Note that, as suggested, OP has also posted over on the Pensions board

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6294122/missold-pension#latest

tooldle

Malthusian said:

tooldle said:

What you say may well be good advice at the time. None of us can say more, as you don’t seem to have the basic details.

If the OP is correct that the dad bought a single life annuity despite having an impaired life expectancy and wanting to provide an income for both of them, it was bad advice.

Did the annuity rate take into account his health issues? (The annuity provider will be able to confirm whether it did. If they keep withholding information, the OP should make a formal complaint.) Even if it did that doesn't make it good advice when they wanted aj joint life annuity.

Daniel54 is right that it used to be a fairly common tragedy of a widow thinking that an annuity would continue to her and then finding that her late husband had bought a single life annuity because the rate was higher. (By fairly common I mean it was regular fodder for the Daily Mail money pages.) But that story used to be more common prior to 2015, when annuities were the standard way to draw a pension fund, and this apparently happened in 2017. So I suspect there is more to this.

(Nowadays, men who just want to spend as much as they can of their pension and don't care about their spouse just cash it in and spend it.)

Unfortunately we have no certainty as to whether or not the advice related to the purchase of an annuity. Until there is some clarity on the sequence of events etc, we really cannot judge.