The Great Pension Withdrawal Scandal (Aviva)...

mattinlincoln

Ok, so I have various pensions scattered about, the main ones with Scottish Widows and Aviva.

Scottish Widows has been superb, excellent customer service and 3-4 days turnaround on a withdrawal request.

Aviva however is completely the reverse, taking upwards of 25-days (yes 25+ days!), to process a withdrawal request.

Step 1 - Convert investment to cash (Personally, 5-mins online)
Step 2 - Send pension illustration to customer (Aviva, 3-5days!)
Step 3 - Accept illustration (Personally, 5-mins online)
Step 4 - Process payment request (Aviva, 13-days!)
Step 5 - Apply tax calculation (Aviva, 5-days!)
Step 6 - Payment to bank account

So, Aviva quote 25-days from initial request to payout, which is shocking. However, this assumes no bank-holidays and no queries from them (which there always are, so you have to call them back, wait in the queue etc). On both occasions, it's actually taken 30-35 days to receive a payout.

During these 25+ days, you receive no progress updates, nothing.

Not only is this frustrating, but you receive no interest on your savings accrued in the meantime.

Keen to hear other peoples experiences.

Best, Matthew

dunstonh

Scottish Widows has been superb, excellent customer service and 3-4 days turnaround on a withdrawal request.

That is something you don't see often!
Was this on their modern contract or a legacy contract?  (I know their retirement account is quick along with their workplace pension offering but in my experience, their legacy contracts are slow and some of their very old contracts are really slow)

So, Aviva quote 25-days from initial request to payout, which is shocking.

Actually, 25 days is not that shocking when you are talking about legacy contracts.   I suspect you are because Aviva's modern contract can have the money in your bank account same day (using CHAPS) if there is cash to support it and a few days later if it needs to go through payroll.

The Great Pension Withdrawal Scandal (Aviva)...

What scandal?    Timescales of 25-30 days on legacy contracts are not a scandal.

Marcon

mattinlincoln said:

Ok, so I have various pensions scattered about, the main ones with Scottish Widows and Aviva.

Scottish Widows has been superb, excellent customer service and 3-4 days turnaround on a withdrawal request.

Aviva however is completely the reverse, taking upwards of 25-days (yes 25+ days!), to process a withdrawal request.

Step 1 - Convert investment to cash (Personally, 5-mins online)
Step 2 - Send pension illustration to customer (Aviva, 3-5days!)
Step 3 - Accept illustration (Personally, 5-mins online)
Step 4 - Process payment request (Aviva, 13-days!)
Step 5 - Apply tax calculation (Aviva, 5-days!)
Step 6 - Payment to bank account

So, Aviva quote 25-days from initial request to payout, which is shocking. However, this assumes no bank-holidays and no queries from them (which there always are, so you have to call them back, wait in the queue etc). On both occasions, it's actually taken 30-35 days to receive a payout.

During these 25+ days, you receive no progress updates, nothing.

Not only is this frustrating, but you receive no interest on your savings accrued in the meantime.

Keen to hear other peoples experiences.

Best, Matthew

What's shocking about a pension provider taking proper care to ensure that the correct funds are paid to the correct customer in line with all regulatory requirements under which they labour, especially in respect of elderly legacy contracts?

What would be shocking is a willingness to just cough up the funds without going through any of the proper processes to safeguard the customer.

Albermarle

You should maybe consider consolidating some of these pensions 'scattered about' especially if you are in the withdrawal stage . Apart from the mixed response you have seen from two different providers, drawing from two pensions will more likely mean you having to contact HMRC to resolve tax issues.

mattinlincoln

Appreciate the feedback.

Apologies, I do not know the difference with legacy and modern schemes. Suffice it to say, I've worked in IT all my life, and know that a complex withdrawal and approval request, can be easily trimmed to 24-48 hours, never mind 25+ days!

mattinlincoln

Marcon said:

mattinlincoln said:

Ok, so I have various pensions scattered about, the main ones with Scottish Widows and Aviva.

Scottish Widows has been superb, excellent customer service and 3-4 days turnaround on a withdrawal request.

Aviva however is completely the reverse, taking upwards of 25-days (yes 25+ days!), to process a withdrawal request.

Step 1 - Convert investment to cash (Personally, 5-mins online)
Step 2 - Send pension illustration to customer (Aviva, 3-5days!)
Step 3 - Accept illustration (Personally, 5-mins online)
Step 4 - Process payment request (Aviva, 13-days!)
Step 5 - Apply tax calculation (Aviva, 5-days!)
Step 6 - Payment to bank account

So, Aviva quote 25-days from initial request to payout, which is shocking. However, this assumes no bank-holidays and no queries from them (which there always are, so you have to call them back, wait in the queue etc). On both occasions, it's actually taken 30-35 days to receive a payout.

During these 25+ days, you receive no progress updates, nothing.

Not only is this frustrating, but you receive no interest on your savings accrued in the meantime.

Keen to hear other peoples experiences.

Best, Matthew

What's shocking about a pension provider taking proper care to ensure that the correct funds are paid to the correct customer in line with all regulatory requirements under which they labour, especially in respect of elderly legacy contracts?

What would be shocking is a willingness to just cough up the funds without going through any of the proper processes to safeguard the customer.

That's a fair point, but 13-days to process just the payment request is ludicrous. 

Albermarle

mattinlincoln said:

Appreciate the feedback.

Apologies, I do not know the difference with legacy and modern schemes. Suffice it to say, I've worked in IT all my life, and know that a complex withdrawal and approval request, can be easily trimmed to 24-48 hours, never mind 25+ days!

In simple terms , legacy schemes are ones originally set up many years ago and closed to new customers. Pension providers tend to launch new pensions when legislation, market trends etc change as it is easier than adapting all the existing ones.
They may suffer with limited functionality, and have to go through outdated processes to keep compliant . 
If you asked Aviva to transfer you to a more modern pension, you might well find everything speeding up.

dunstonh

Apologies, I do not know the difference with legacy and modern schemes. Suffice it to say, I've worked in IT all my life, and know that a complex withdrawal and approval request, can be easily trimmed to 24-48 hours, never mind 25+ days!

If you have worked in IT all your life you will know that hard coded systems of the 1990s (or earlier) are not easily updated to offer options that were created in 2016.

And if providers attempt to update them, these IT fellows are damned expensive and it can cost billions to update and still not end up with the functionality you need (Aviva a good example where it paid billions and still couldn't get the IT people to get all the legacy schemes onto a newer system).

That's a fair point, but 13-days to process just the payment request is ludicrous. 

No its not ludicrous as there is a work queue for a process that needs manual input.

If you had prepared in advance and got the Aviva pensions onto their newer systems, you would have found it much quicker.   You should see how long SW take with legacy plans.

mattinlincoln

Sorry, what you've said is poppycock! If Aviva hasn't migrated its legacy data to a more modern environment, then that's their bad. Enterprises do this day in day out, to reduce cost, complexity and improve speed.

If you're suggesting that as a customer, I should be satisfied with the fact they have old systems and manual processes, then no I'm not.

Good god man, what next? Are you suggesting a taxi business that runs cars from the 1950's, should be successful? Maybe you'd be their only customer! 

Thrugelmir

mattinlincoln said:

Appreciate the feedback.

Apologies, I do not know the difference with legacy and modern schemes. Suffice it to say, I've worked in IT all my life, and know that a complex withdrawal and approval request, can be easily trimmed to 24-48 hours, never mind 25+ days!

How many old legacy IT systems still exist today in many industries?  The cost of migrating the data simply isn't worth the expense for what is aclosed book than is being run off. 

tempus_fugit

mattinlincoln said:

Sorry, what you've said is poppycock! If Aviva hasn't migrated its legacy data to a more modern environment, then that's their bad. Enterprises do this day in day out, to reduce cost, complexity and improve speed.

If you're suggesting that as a customer, I should be satisfied with the fact they have old systems and manual processes, then no I'm not.

Good god man, what next? Are you suggesting a taxi business that runs cars from the 1950's, should be successful? Maybe you'd be their only customer! 

Actually, they don't. They will only do this if it is cost-effective, but sometimes, depending on the state of the legacy system, it's cheaper to leave it as it is, even if there are problems. I used to work for a large oil and gas company on one of their legacy systems. They spoke about updating it for years but never did it in my time there as it ran fine, albeit in a very "Heath Robinson" fashion compared to the newer systems. They may have upgraded it by now (I left 8 years ago) but it does show how legacy systems can be left for some time due to the cost and complexity of upgrading them, and this was a company that makes billions year on year.

As to whether you should be satisfied with this is another matter entirely.