Willis Towers Watson-Lloyds Pension Scheme Administrators

Albermarle

Although I can understand your frustration, you need to understand the pressure pension administrators are under, the complexity of the issues they are dealing with and the string of queries they are bombarded with on a daily basis

I guess that the bombardment is worse, as a lot of the queries are people chasing up non answers to previous questions.

If they were more responsive in the first place it would help....

DT2001

Albermarle said:

Although I can understand your frustration, you need to understand the pressure pension administrators are under, the complexity of the issues they are dealing with and the string of queries they are bombarded with on a daily basis

I guess that the bombardment is worse, as a lot of the queries are people chasing up non answers to previous questions.

If they were more responsive in the first place it would help....

As pensions are so complex especially with GMP (and made worse by equalisation and it’s various options of dealing with) I can understand the need to follow up. Knowing the correct question to ask in the 1st place is difficult!
WTW certainly used to allocate questions as they came in so you’d get a different person answering each subsequent query. I’m not sure if that is still the case but it doesn’t seem ideal with non standard requests.
My Barclays pension before being handled by WTW was administered in house. On one change of interpretation they took legal advice to not inform all deferred pensioners as it was felt it would confuse more than it would enlighten! Maybe you cannot take that approach now.

Slower response times must be a consequence of GMP equalisation (which isn’t straight forward), the desire to keep schemes costs down and the need to have a greater/wider knowledge.

Albermarle

Slower response times must be a consequence of GMP equalisation (which isn’t straight forward), the desire to keep schemes costs down and the need to have a greater/wider knowledge.

This could well be an issue, but previous similar threads have also mentioned low paid poorly trained staff; poor adaption of systems to staff working from home; enquiry lines that send you round in circles etc,.  It is not just WTW to be fair, I had a similar experience with Mercer.

philng

This is getting more and more confusing.

The part of Pension with an Underpin has a current value of £43000 approximately on which they are offering a pension of just £1200pa index linked but then it states a figure of £1630 with Under Pin.

Now they have advised the following after they sent just the £1200pa quotes:

Please note that the figures illustrated in your retirement quotation, specifically the £1,201.74 figure is the annual amount that you would receive. The RST figure as outlined in my colleagues email unfortunately does not represent the annual amount of pension that you would receive.

 The revalued RST figure, which is illustrated on your online statements, is converted into a fund value, from which an annual pension amount is determined, using actuarial approved factors. The £1,201.74 is the calculated pension value. Please note you would then be entitled to the additional figures as illustrated under options 1a, 1b or 1c.

And yet last years statement stated:

Your PIP underpin Did you know that the Scheme has to provide you with a minimum level of retirement income? When you come to use your PIP account, for example at retirement, we work out what the minimum benefits are and compare this to the benefits available from your PIP account and you receive the higher of the two. This arrangement is called an underpin. Your underpin at 30 June 2021 is £1,587.26 a year i If the underpin applies to you, it doesn’t mean that you have to take an income from the Scheme. You still have the option to transfer your account to another registered pension arrangement.


Confused or what?

Also seem very poor figures for a 63 year old or am I missing something?

xylophone

Have you now sorted out your own (DB) Pension?

https://www.lloydsbankinggrouppensions.com/assets/scheme_docs/hbosfs/scheme_guide-f4d0c891008a5ca598e420f7a20da03eb4c8a3e81edc1b639c95a195a228cef7.pdf

The part of Pension with an Underpin has a current value of £43000 approximately on which they are offering a pension of just £1200pa index linked but then it states a figure of £1630 with Under Pin.

This is your wife's pension? There is an explanation of the PIP below.

https://www.lloydsbankinggrouppensions.com/scheme_benefits/understanding_your_pip

See also

https://techzone.abrdn.com/public/pensions/Tech-guide-section-92b-rights

philng

xylophone said:

Have you now sorted out your own (DB) Pension?

https://www.lloydsbankinggrouppensions.com/assets/scheme_docs/hbosfs/scheme_guide-f4d0c891008a5ca598e420f7a20da03eb4c8a3e81edc1b639c95a195a228cef7.pdf

The part of Pension with an Underpin has a current value of £43000 approximately on which they are offering a pension of just £1200pa index linked but then it states a figure of £1630 with Under Pin.

This is your wife's pension? There is an explanation of the PIP below.

https://www.lloydsbankinggrouppensions.com/scheme_benefits/understanding_your_pip

See also

https://techzone.abrdn.com/public/pensions/Tech-guide-section-92b-rights

Yes fine with my one.

But still confused on wife under pin one. Why are they saying the lower figure £1200 when everything else says £1600 with under pin?

Is that all you can get on £43000?

xylophone

This Underpin is known as the Reference Scheme Test or RST and reflects the statutory minimum that the scheme must provide. This is calculated at your date of leaving and then revalued up until date of statement or proposed date of retirement. The RST is then used in the calculations to provide the annual pension payable and attributed lump sum. Although the annual scheme pension in your recently received retirement quote was £1,201.74 p/a, the RST that was revalued and used in the calculations was £1,636.74.

Your wife is proposing taking this pension earlier than age 65.

Has the revalued RST pension amount been reduced by an early retirement factor?

philng

xylophone said:

This Underpin is known as the Reference Scheme Test or RST and reflects the statutory minimum that the scheme must provide. This is calculated at your date of leaving and then revalued up until date of statement or proposed date of retirement. The RST is then used in the calculations to provide the annual pension payable and attributed lump sum. Although the annual scheme pension in your recently received retirement quote was £1,201.74 p/a, the RST that was revalued and used in the calculations was £1,636.74.

Your wife is proposing taking this pension earlier than age 65.

Has the revalued RST pension amount been reduced by an early retirement factor?

No normal retirement age is 60 and she is now 62.

I have emailed back but the delay in responses and when they come are unclear and frustrating.

xylophone

No normal retirement age is 60 and she is now 62.

But does RST revalue to age 65? RST (although it replaced GMP) is not the same as GMP.

Have a look at this with reference to RST.

https://www.pensions-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/2017/po-18030/pearl-staff-group-pension-scheme-po-18030

And see

https://techzone.abrdn.com/public/pensions/Tech-guide-section-92b-rights

I think your wife is going to have to go back to WTW and ask.

xylophone

And you may be interested in this (transfer of pension with RST link).

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6365428/losing-guaranteed-benefits-from-a-pension-transfer/p2