Problems with MyCSP

zaax

A P60 which you should have kept is valid proof

brooksby

Or indeed the annual pension statements that used to be provided in the good old days when DWP was the administrator, before the arrival of Capita Hartshead and subsequently MyCSP.  These provided details of annual salary as well as amount of pension accrued.  I have offered to provide MyCSP with copies of these but they have not taken me up on it so far.  I have now sent them detailed calculations of my leaving benefits and the subsequent annual cost of living increases and invited them to explain why they come up with a different, lower, number, but again - surprise - no response.  I feel like I have done their job for them, which I shouldn't have to do.

zaax

Get your union rep to give them a poke

RetSol

I was just wondering whether anyone had experienced problems trying to get an accurate pension quotation from MyCSP?  

LOL. 

MyCSP took 8 months to send me an accurate quotation of my preserved pension.  And that was in 2019 and therefore pre-pandemic.  And I was chasing them regularly.

Part of the difficulty lay in failures of communication between MyCSP and my former civil service employers.  When I discovered this, I wrote to the HR directors at the departments concerned to ask them to intervene. 

I eventually also wrote to the CEO with the result that the matter was sent to the "referrals" (troubleshooting) unit.  They were helpful on occasion but it did not really speed things up. 

I found the process very stressful. 

Good luck! 

RetSol

When I applied for the pension, I provided them with my statement of leaving benefits from 2011 (which I know to be correct) so all they had to do was to add on the cost of living increase for each year and deduct the actuarial reduction, so I can't really understand why they keep getting it wrong.

Alas, it's not that simple, in my experience. 

I had a statement of preserved benefits provided by my cs employer when I left in 2010. 

But, MyCSP did not hold the underlying data,  MyCSP's records were incomplete and they did not tally with the statement, hence the repeated need for me to query the calculations and the to-ing and fro-ing with my former employers. 

Like a previous contributor, I felt that I was doing MyCSP's job for them. For example, information clearly available to them on the 2010 statement (which I had supplied with the application, as requested) was ignored until I pointed out the discrepancy, leading to yet another enquiry to my former employer. 

My blood pressure still rises when I think about it all! 

Happily, my former employers held my records going back to 1993. 

Additional issues were:

rounding errors in the 2010 statement when calculating the added years (to my detriment), 

changes to disability discrimination legislation post-2010 which affected the calculation (to my benefit). 

I am sure that you do not need reminding that MyCSP can claw back overpaid pension further down the line so it is important that the calculations are correct to start with. 

I ended up with a slightly higher pension than I was expecting but I had to work for it! 

brooksby

Thank you for your comments, fellow sufferers, and sorry to be bringing up bad memories for some of you!

I have now had an unsatisfactory and perfunctory response to my second complaint, stating that their calculations are correct and that they have applied a 'Pension Increase factor' to my leaving benefits of 1.175.  Does anyone know what this term means, as I have never come across it before and can't find it in any of the nuvos documentation?  There is no explanation given of what it is or how it is derived, and since the total doesn't tally with my own calculations of the annual cost of living increases I need to understand where they are getting this 'factor' from.  I have asked the question of the complaints person but I am not confident that I will get a helpful reply.

I am finding the internal complaints process to be unprofessional and less than rigorous.  I have the impression that the person is not really checking things out properly, just going and asking the administrator what they have done and then parroting it back to me.  I realise they must have loads of complaints to deal with, given their poor record in getting things right in the first place, but I don't think that dealing with them less than thoroughly is saving them time in the long run, as people will just keep coming back to them.

I know what you mean about the blood pressure, RetSol, feel as if I should be popping Ramipril like Smarties!

hugheskevi

brooksby said:

I need the pension to start in payment end March...When I applied for the pension, I provided them with my statement of leaving benefits from 2011...they have applied a 'Pension Increase factor' to my leaving benefits of 1.175.  Does anyone know what this term means,

It sounds like standard revaluation. Looking at the pension increase tables from 2021, the increase for a pension deferred between 25 November 2011 and 24 December 2011 was 1.1765.

brucethebluenose

I am currently having the same issue with MyCSP. Due to retire 24th Nov 2023 and yet to receive a pension offer that matches the modeler never mind take into consideration Mcloud.  They managed to miss a pensionable allowance I have and it has taken me 2 months just to get them to acknowledge this, they did not want to beleive any of the documents I sent them, P60, Payslips and pension statement.  

If you call, the person always says it is being esculated, If you email, you will never get a response for around 10 days minimum.  I now have 5 working days left and no pension agreement in place, I could lose a deposit on a property as we are moving country.  

No one seems to have any sense of urgency and that you may be depending on this money that you have worked hard for all your life.  No one will transfer you to someone that could possibly help, its always esculated.  I called on Tuesday, was told that a recalculation would be done and emailed to me.  I called today, Friday, and now I need to wait till Tuesday with my retirement the following Friday.  I have logged complaints but only received automated responses, I have esculated it higher with my employers, but I'm now getting the feeling that they have had enough of it as well.  After 33 years in the Civil Service this was the last thing I expected, It just seems to be never ending and incredibly stressful, I have no idea if this will ever be resolved.

Emails I have received from them generally tell me what I already knew and the now that they have acknowledged the fact they have my pensionable salary wrong, they asked me to sign the offer that was wrong to speed things up for me.  I refused as I need to know what figures I am signing up to so they now need to recalculate.

I'm sick to the back teeth with them and just want to take this further, they should not ne alloud to get away with stress they cause.  Really angry!! 

hugheskevi

brucethebluenose said:

I am currently having the same issue with MyCSP. Due to retire 24th Nov 2023 and yet to receive a pension offer that matches the modeler never mind take into consideration Mcloud.  They managed to miss a pensionable allowance I have and it has taken me 2 months just to get them to acknowledge this, they did not want to beleive any of the documents I sent them, P60, Payslips and pension statement.  

The modeler is very crude and simply uses pensionable earnings as at the last 31st March rather than the definition of final pensionable earnings calculated under scheme rules. For Premium members in particular, the difference between their pension as shown by the modeler and their actual pension entitlement could be different by over 10% even if all pay and pension data held is accurate.

It isn't that they do not believe the information you have sent them, but that the service and pay data used to calculate pension entitlement must be sent to MyCSP by the employer.

It is difficult for a member to try to ensure pension records are accurate to avoid this situation, all a member can do is carefully check monthly pay statements and P60s to ensure the correct pensionable earnings are shown and that the correct pension deduction is being made, along with checking the Annual Benefit Statement very carefully for any discrepancies. Correcting everything as promptly as possible is the best way to ensure the pension record is accurate.

brucethebluenose said:

I have logged complaints but only received automated responses, I have esculated it higher with my employers, but I'm now getting the feeling that they have had enough of it as well.  

Was it an Internal Dispute Resolute Stage 1 complaint (IDR)? Anything else doesn't really matter and is simply voicing frustration.

Do you know exactly where the issue lies? Has the employer interfaced the correct pensionable earnings data to MyCSP, or are MyCSP awaiting the correct data? If the employer has sent the correct data there is nothing further the employer can do.

brucethebluenose said:

I now have 5 working days left and no pension agreement in place, I could lose a deposit on a property as we are moving country... After 33 years in the Civil Service this was the last thing I expected

Unfortunately, a number of members rely on receiving their pension and lump sum on the day they retire, which is a very dangerous thing to do as delays of this nature are not uncommon even when several months of notice of retirement is provided.

With a pension record stretching back 33 years, which means you will have a Guaranteed Minimum Pension element which has to be reconciled with HMRC, as well as membership of both classic and alpha and eligible for the 2015 Remedy, there is a greater chance for past service and payroll errors to exist and be uncovered in the award process which then creates delays. If you had only had 7 years of service all under alpha in the post-contracting out era, the probability of past payroll issues would be much lower.

brucethebluenose said:

It just seems to be never ending and incredibly stressful, I have no idea if this will ever be resolved.

It will get resolved at some point, but may well take weeks or months. Everything will be recalculated with arrears paid, in the fullness of time.

brucethebluenose said:

they asked me to sign the offer that was wrong to speed things up for me.  I refused as I need to know what figures I am signing up to so they now need to recalculate.

You will receive whatever you are entitled to under the scheme rules. If you are initially paid an incorrect amount then once the correct data is available the pension would be recalculated and arrears paid (or overpayments recovered). If you had signed the initial award offer you could have received most of the pension and lump sum due whilst MyCSP and your employer recalculated your entitlement rather than waiting - the signing isn't a final agreement to an unchangable amount due.

brucethebluenose said:

I'm sick to the back teeth with them and just want to take this further, they should not ne alloud to get away with stress they cause.  Really angry!! 

IDR process is the way forward if you want to take it further. But that would just be a long process, would not speed anything up in terms of payment, would be a lot more annoyance if you take it through IDR Stage 2 and then to the Pension Ombudsman, and wouldn't result in anything more than a few hundred pounds compensation at most.

cspgroan

Coming to this late, but what a sorry saga!  Has anyone used an external advisor and can they recommend? I'm struggling to find any who claim expertise in CS pension, and incredibly FDA has proved useless too.  Secondly, my MP wrote to the pensions minister, which generated a new number from MyCSP but no progress so far.  Will update if that changes.