Aviva Pensions Customer Service

dunstonh

The letter basically says that the estimated fund values given in both the 'retirement options' and 'retirement notification' letters are based upon standard growth rates provided by the FCA.They do not factor in the performance of the actual funds that a particular pension pot is invested in.

There are three FCA standard growth rates (Low rate, Mid rate and High rate). Aviva apparently use the higher of the three figures to make things look more optimistic.

No, they don't.   That would not be allowed and my experience with Aviva projections is that do not do this.

Providers can use a single rate, two rates or show all three.    Where a provider uses two rates, they use the lower and upper.  Where a provider uses a single rate, they use the mid-rate.

No projection rates can actually be classed as optimistic.    They are universally pessimistic.

You never clarified which Aviva you are dealing with but Aviva uses all three methods across their legacy companies

In my view these 'your pension could be worth' figures are not a very useful guide when trying to decide whether to begin drawing my pension in July or to defer it for another year.They are not.   However, they are not much use most of the time due to changes in how you can take your pension.

Effectively, you would need stochastic modelling showing the potential range of your underlying investments over the period in question.   That would you can see the worst case and best case scenario based on your underlying assets and go from there. 

The methodology used by the FCA broadly gives you the long term median.    Median figures are useless for short term periods.

dosh37

Yesterday I received another letter from Aviva:-

"It has now been four weeks since we received your complaint. I am sorry we have not been able to resolve your complaint. The delay is due to us still looking into your concerns.

We will issue a final response within the next four weeks. If this is not possible we will write again giving th reason for the delay, and your right to contact the Financial Ombudsman Service enclosing details of how to do so."

This is crazy. I never raised a complaint! I simply sent a secure message asking a simple question about fund performance.

The previous letter they sent me answered the question. There was no request to respond with a 'complaint resolved' message.

Aviva customer service appear to be blindly following some software driven compaints procedure. No doubt the latest letter was triggered by automated software. I wonder if the people who dream up these processes ever test them using real customers.

 

dunstonh

This is crazy. I never raised a complaint! I simply sent a secure message asking a simple question about fund performance.

If you worded it similar to what you have here, I can understand why a call centre worker (who cannot answer the questions anyway) would refer it to the complaints team.

Aviva customer service appear to be blindly following some software driven compaints procedure. No doubt the latest letter was triggered by automated software. I wonder if the people who dream up these processes ever test them using real customers.

No. They are not blindly following it.  However, if a staff member refers it to the complaints team, they have to follow the regulated process.  That is a defined process with regulatory requirements.

Farside71

Stuff can get routed to complaints team if they think it might miss SLA i.e. there no hope in hell of it being dealt with in a short time period, as you've seen there is another set of timelines once it's being treated as a complaint.  Downside it increases complaints tally for Aviva which needs to be reported to FCA.

Tommyjw

Farside71 said:

Stuff can get routed to complaints team if they think it might miss SLA i.e. there no hope in hell of it being dealt with in a short time period, as you've seen there is another set of timelines once it's being treated as a complaint.  Downside it increases complaints tally for Aviva which needs to be reported to FCA.

I cannot fathom any administration company ever choosing to have a complaint logged than a single case impacting their SLAs, that's ridiculous. 

Farside71

Tommyjw said:

Farside71 said:

Stuff can get routed to complaints team if they think it might miss SLA i.e. there no hope in hell of it being dealt with in a short time period, as you've seen there is another set of timelines once it's being treated as a complaint.  Downside it increases complaints tally for Aviva which needs to be reported to FCA.

I cannot fathom any administration company ever choosing to have a complaint logged than a single case impacting their SLAs, that's ridiculous. 

I worked for one. This is the sort of trick the outsourcer involved would pull when they knew they had no hope of answering the question quickly to the customer's satisfaction.

An enquiry like this might need technical services input. It can be sent to the complaints queue and result in an expression of dissatisfaction which technically isn't a complaint and certainly isn't reportable.

dunstonh

Tommyjw said:

Farside71 said:

Stuff can get routed to complaints team if they think it might miss SLA i.e. there no hope in hell of it being dealt with in a short time period, as you've seen there is another set of timelines once it's being treated as a complaint.  Downside it increases complaints tally for Aviva which needs to be reported to FCA.

I cannot fathom any administration company ever choosing to have a complaint logged than a single case impacting their SLAs, that's ridiculous. 

The regulator is a bit stats focused.   If you are a company of a certain size, it expects a certain ballpark level of complaints.  It expects a certain ballpark percentage to be upheld.  It would be concerned if there were less than average complaints and a lower complaint rate than average and would look closer.     Those at the top of the list and the bottom of the list are more likely to be looked at closer than those in the middle.        

Novice_investor101

Most likely you either filled in the complaint form on their website unintentionally or your wording was such that it met the FCA’s definition of a complaint. At that point they have to log one regardless of intent. 

dosh37

So another letter from Aviva arrived yesterday...

"It's time to check on your pension" Your fund value on 30th May: £160,463

I logged on to their website to check. Fund value on 24th June: £151,359

So the fund value has dropped by £9104 between me receiving the letter just one day ago and me checking online today.

A fall of over 5.7%.

I would be better off taking 25% of the pot Tax Free and putting it in an easy access savings account paying 1.5%.

I hunted around the Aviva website looking for how to go about taking money from my Pension Pot.

All I could find were pages telling me what my retirement choices are but nowhere to actually complete a request to implement one of the options.

Does anyone know how I go about this? Can it be done online? Do you have to call the dreaded Customer Service number and hope someone actually answers?

QrizB

dosh37 said:

So another letter from Aviva arrived yesterday...

"It's time to check on your pension" Your fund value on 30th May: £160,463

I logged on to their website to check. Fund value on 24th June: £151,359

So the fund value has dropped by £9104 between me receiving the letter just one day ago and me checking online today.

A fall of over 5.7%.

I'm tempted to sugggest you stop checking your fund value online.

I would be better off taking 25% of the pot Tax Free and putting it in an easy access savings account paying 1.5%.

I hunted around the Aviva website looking for how to go about taking money from my Pension Pot.

What is your plan for retirement, and how does this fit into that plan?

Remember the general idea is to buy low and sell high.