Pension Drawdown Processing Time

SavinNewbie

I am fairly newly retired (almost one year). I'm with Standard Life and it took 3 phone calls each about 45 minutes to set up my flexible drawdown. It then took about 6 weeks before i finally started getting my money. On the 1st Feb I requested a tax free lump and was told it would take 10-15 days to arrive in my account. Nearly 5 work weeks have elapsed and still no sign of the money. Has anyone else experienced this king of poor customer service? Why does it take so long? Cost of living crisis is not acceptable as an excuse in my opinion. My scheme charges fairly low fees due to the discounts the company negotiated. Can anyone suggest a better drawdown provider where processing is quicker? Thanks

dunstonh

. I'm with Standard Life and it took 3 phone calls each about 45 minutes to set up my flexible drawdown.

I am going to assume you are referring to the Standard Life (Phoenix) rather than Standard Life (Abrdn).  The latter is much quicker.

On the 1st Feb I requested a tax free lump and was told it would take 10-15 days to arrive in my account. Nearly 5 work weeks have elapsed and still no sign of the money. Has anyone else experienced this king of poor customer service?

It shouldn't take that long.  However, the Standard Life (Phoenix) plans tend to use old fashioned software and some of their plans would be expected to take longer than those on the modern software.

Cost of living crisis is not acceptable as an excuse in my opinion. 

Who has tried that as an excuse?

 My scheme charges fairly low fees due to the discounts the company negotiated. 

That makes it the old Standard Life (Phoenix) software then.    Also, many company pensions will have a professional administrator rather than the provider and the processing is done by the administrator rather than the insurer. They are notoriously slow.

Can anyone suggest a better drawdown provider where processing is quicker? 

All of them should be quicker than that.  Including Standard Life.

Albermarle

It shouldn't take that long.  However, the Standard Life (Phoenix) plans tend to use old fashioned software and some of their plans would be expected to take longer than those on the modern software.

Although when accumulating/not drawing down, the SL ( Phoenix) website ( and app) is pretty good, and feels quick and modern.

I know though if I ever want to drawdown from it, I would have to first transfer to a new SL pension, as it is quite old,  so that would bring a delay I guess.

SavinNewbie

Thanks both. The discounts on the scheme are worth having but I think I'll take a look.

dunstonh

For reference,  I keyed a UFPLS payment in yesterday afternoon on Standard Life Elevate (Abrdn).   I got the message it had been authorised yesterday evening and the client has messaged me this morning to say the tax-free cash is in their account.    The taxable element will be a few days behind because it has to go through payroll.

SavinNewbie

dunstonh said:

For reference,  I keyed a UFPLS payment in yesterday afternoon on Standard Life Elevate (Abrdn).   I got the message it had been authorised yesterday evening and the client has messaged me this morning to say the tax-free cash is in their account.    The taxable element will be a few days behind because it has to go through payroll.

Unfortunately with standard life phoenix so there's no way of doing what you achieved unless i move my pension. On lookingat my charges I can see that SL add 1% on average to fund ongoing charges even where the underlying fund is managed by someone else. My discounts get me down to 0.35% overall but some funds are tracking so charge 0.05% so I give SL(P) 0.3 for delaying my processing. I tried to find an IFA through unbiased and ended up with an adviser from True Potential - Nope not doing that.

dunstonh

 I tried to find an IFA through unbiased and ended up with an adviser from True Potential - Nope not doing that.

Obviously, TP are not IFAs and that is the problem with unbiased nowadays.     They stopped being a directory for IFAs many years ago.  Now they accept FAs and sales reps and turned into a lead generation site.   i..e you enter your details and unbiased sell you to the firms using their service.   We stopped paying unbiased for our entry when they did that and none of the directly authorised IFAs in our area are listed on unbiased any more.  Just a regional firm, a network firm and the rest are restricted FAs and salesforces.          It isn't an unbiased directory anymore.

Moonwolf

What does this mean? it isn't clear from the press release what level of flexibility in drawdown is supported.

https://www.standardlife.co.uk/about/press-releases/launches-in-scheme-drawdown#:~:text=In-Scheme Drawdown launched for Standard Life Group Flexible,Increased flexibility introduced for 1.5 million pensions savers 

Albermarle

Moonwolf said:

What does this mean? it isn't clear from the press release what level of flexibility in drawdown is supported.

https://www.standardlife.co.uk/about/press-releases/launches-in-scheme-drawdown#:~:text=In-Scheme Drawdown launched for Standard Life Group Flexible,Increased flexibility introduced for 1.5 million pensions savers 

I think it just means that previously to drawdown from one of their workplace pensions, you had to transfer to a different product/pension and now you don't.

Albermarle

SavinNewbie said:

dunstonh said:

For reference,  I keyed a UFPLS payment in yesterday afternoon on Standard Life Elevate (Abrdn).   I got the message it had been authorised yesterday evening and the client has messaged me this morning to say the tax-free cash is in their account.    The taxable element will be a few days behind because it has to go through payroll.

Unfortunately with standard life phoenix so there's no way of doing what you achieved unless i move my pension. On lookingat my charges I can see that SL add 1% on average to fund ongoing charges even where the underlying fund is managed by someone else. My discounts get me down to 0.35% overall but some funds are tracking so charge 0.05% so I give SL(P) 0.3 for delaying my processing. I tried to find an IFA through unbiased and ended up with an adviser from True Potential - Nope not doing that.

Organising a UFPLS payment is not that simple with nearly all retail pension providers ( i.e. those dealing direct with the general public) IFA's have access to quicker systems.
Partly it is because a retail pension provider is obliged to run some questions past you to make sure you know what you are doing, whilst it is assumed an IFA has got all that sorted with their client.
Also 0.35% overall is pretty low in terms of charges. Remember that if you had a fund costing 0.05%, you would have a platform charge on top of that normally.

Linton

dunstonh said:

For reference,  I keyed a UFPLS payment in yesterday afternoon on Standard Life Elevate (Abrdn).   I got the message it had been authorised yesterday evening and the client has messaged me this morning to say the tax-free cash is in their account.    The taxable element will be a few days behind because it has to go through payroll.

To generalise Dunstonh's comment...

Some platforms (all the ones I use) only run the payroll program once a month, generally on the 1st if I remember correctly.  They also require that the cash to be paid out is available in the account about 2 weeks previously.  This means that if your timing is wrong it could take 6 weeks or more between asking for a taxable drawdown and actually receiving the money.