How to change bank details for Barclays pension

enthusiasticsaver

I am at my wits end trying to change my bank details with Towers Willis Watson, the pension administrators for Barclays UK Retirement Fund.  

We moved banks in June.  No issue in moving other pensions and direct debits but Barclays pension administrators have been a nightmare to deal with.  

There is no facility online to change bank details so I email them. No response.  I email again a week or 10 days later and again no response.  I phone and they advise me they asked for security information by letter in spite of me giving them the information they requested in my original email and on phoning them.  The letter eventually arrives a month after the date it was supposed to and I return immediately with a change of bank details mandate.  They ask for a statement from my new bank account but as it is an online bank and I am paperless I was unsure how to do so and email them a confirmation of transaction history .  Still no response so I phone again today and they cannot advise me if they will accept the transaction history rather than a paper statement. 

Am I the only one to have difficulty in doing such a simple thing with these pension administrators? 

xylophone

There is no facility online to change bank details

Interesting - I note that this  does appear to be possible for pensioners of the Sainsbury's scheme (also administered by WTW.

https://www.jspensions.co.uk/sps-sainsburys/

My Pension is a secure website run by the Sainsbury’s Pensions Team at Willis Towers Watson. Once you’ve registered to use My Pension, you’ll be able to view details of your pension online and also easily notify us of any changes to your personal circumstances, such as change of address or change of bank details.

You could make a formal complaint to the Trustees about the poor standard of administration?

https://epa.towerswatson.com/accounts/barclays/public/barclays-bank-trustee-board/

Marcon

xylophone said:

There is no facility online to change bank details

Interesting - I note that this  does appear to be possible for pensioners of the Sainsbury's scheme (also administered by WTW.

https://www.jspensions.co.uk/sps-sainsburys/

My Pension is a secure website run by the Sainsbury’s Pensions Team at Willis Towers Watson. Once you’ve registered to use My Pension, you’ll be able to view details of your pension online and also easily notify us of any changes to your personal circumstances, such as change of address or change of bank details.

You could make a formal complaint to the Trustees about the poor standard of administration?

https://epa.towerswatson.com/accounts/barclays/public/barclays-bank-trustee-board/

It's up to the scheme, not the administrators, to decide what they will or won't allow members to do online. Given the number of online scams, it's no surprise that many schemes don't allow such online changes - very much in the interests of member protection.

Couldn't agree more about complaining direct to the trustee board about the poor service.

Tommyjw

Guessing, i'd reckon the part about needing a statement is because they likely do a bank check (similar to an identity check) which had failed for you so they are asking for evidence the bank belongs to you in the form of, usually, a copy of a statement. We do similar, but we tell people this in advance so they may chose to send us this in advance too. We seperately are happy with a photo of the bank card for example.

Even if your paperless i've njver come across a bank that doesnt have an online statement available.

This is, of course, seperate to the obviously poor service which is ofcourse very very below standard.

enthusiasticsaver

Thanks for comments. I will definitely be complaining to the trustees for the poor service. After having extracted a promise from the service team to phone me yesterday to confirm they now have everything they need to change bank details and to reset my password as for some inexplicable reason I can no longer use the self service online portal it was no surprise that they failed to ring back. Awful service. 

enthusiasticsaver

xylophone said:

There is no facility online to change bank details

Interesting - I note that this  does appear to be possible for pensioners of the Sainsbury's scheme (also administered by WTW.

https://www.jspensions.co.uk/sps-sainsburys/

My Pension is a secure website run by the Sainsbury’s Pensions Team at Willis Towers Watson. Once you’ve registered to use My Pension, you’ll be able to view details of your pension online and also easily notify us of any changes to your personal circumstances, such as change of address or change of bank details.

You could make a formal complaint to the Trustees about the poor standard of administration?

https://epa.towerswatson.com/accounts/barclays/public/barclays-bank-trustee-board/

Yes both my main pension administrators and my husbands allowed us to change details online in just a few minutes. Only the Barclays scheme which didn’t allow it and seems to use some long drawn out convoluted process involving letters, statements from new banks etc etc. Presumably as you say it is down to Barclays to decide what level of authority the online portal provides. It is also demands we constantly change the password.

xylophone

Awful service. 

Dire!

I will definitely be complaining to the trustees for the poor service. 

As soon as possible I'd say....

Presumably as you say it is down to Barclays to decide what level of authority the online portal provides. 

This was Marcon's take on the situation - presumably  correct as it does appear that at least one other scheme administered by WTW permits changes to personal details on line.