Can I trust ReAssure with old Barclays Life pension?

Truro_Paul

I am now 55 and have an old Barclays Life pension worth approx £30,000 that is now owned and managed by ReAssure. This is not my primary retirement income as I work in education and have a teacher's local authority pension. However, I would like to be able to access a tax free lump sum in the case of an emergency, especially as I am a tenant. Therefore, I was planning to set up a ReAssure Retirement Account and have a telephone call with PensionWise booked for later this month after which I will proceed.

However, the reviews of ReAssure on Trustpilot make pretty grim reading and I understand they are the most complained about company in this field. They do seem to have significantly improved the online portal for former Barclays Life pension in recent months (it was almost non-existent nine months ago) so perhaps things have improved? I would appreciate hearing from others in the same situation as myself, many thanks!

MorningcoffeeIV

Truro_Paul said:

However, the reviews of ReAssure on Trustpilot make pretty grim reading and I understand they are the most complained about company in this field.

They have a 79% 4 and 5 star rating - so unusually high. However, Trustpilot is not somewhere you go to get an accurate idea of a company's performance.

What are your specific concerns?

Truro_Paul

MorningcoffeeIV said:

Truro_Paul said:

However, the reviews of ReAssure on Trustpilot make pretty grim reading and I understand they are the most complained about company in this field.

They have a 79% 4 and 5 star rating - so unusually high. However, Trustpilot is not somewhere you go to get an accurate idea of a company's performance.

What are your specific concerns?

Customer service seems a recurrent complaint, with reports of being kept waiting weeks and months for payments due to lost forms etc. If I do need to take a lump sum then I would not want to be waiting more than four weeks for the funds. But I am new to this and may be worrying too much about online reviews

boingy

If you are worried about them you can transfer the pension to pretty much any other provider and the new provider does all the leg work for the transfer. You might have to sign paper forms for some transfers but it is painless, although it can be slow.

lohr500

After my wife had a shocking experience with Phoenix Life over a two year period trying to transfer the funds from a company pension where the Trustees had disappeared, I was really concerned to discover that both ReAssure and Standard Life were part of the Phoenix Group. We have various pensions/bonds with both ReAsssure and Standard Life.

So I had low expectations when wanting to do a partial withdrawal from a ReAssure bond back in February this year.
I submitted the partial request form online on the 13th February and funds were in my nominated account 8 working days later.

However, given the terrible service we received from Phoenix Life, out of principle and given the choice we would never invest new funds with any business under the Phoenix Group umbrella.

Granted the company pension issue with Phoenix Life was complex, but they did very little to actively assist with the resolution.

Just my own opinion. 

A._Badger

Truly, I wouldn't trust ReAssure with anything at all. For over a year, my solicitor, an investment broking company and I have (yes, literally, all three!) been battling to get ReAssure even to respond to letters concerning some bonds I have inherited..  

I had never even heard of ReAssure before finding myself in his situation, so looked them up and when I did, discovered that they top the Ombudsman's complaints list. I am not in the least surprised. They currently head my list (sponsored by British Telecom) of companies with which I would not do business even if they were the last supplier on earth. 

ReAsssure? No barge pole is long enough.

dunstonh

However, the reviews of ReAssure on Trustpilot make pretty grim reading

Which part of ReAssure were the Trustpilot reviews referring to?  

Were those complaints whilst the company was running the software of the legacy company or after they moved to their new software?

They do seem to have significantly improved the online portal for former Barclays Life pension in recent months (it was almost non-existent nine months ago) so perhaps things have improved?

Perhaps you are putting too much weight on Trustpilot.   It is fairly well known that Trustpilot is not a reliable way to buy or review financial products.

After my wife had a shocking experience with Phoenix Life over a two year period trying to transfer the funds from a company pension where the Trustees had disappeared, I was really concerned to discover that both ReAssure and Standard Life were part of the Phoenix Group. We have various pensions/bonds with both ReAsssure and Standard Life.

missing trustees is something that is not an easy fix and would typically be measured in years rather than days.  I generally find that the service under Phoenix improves compared to what it was in the legacy company days.   However, there is that period shortly after takeover of the legacy book and moving to their own software where service standards tend to fall away for a short time.

Aberdeen Standard Life sold the Standard Life brand to Phoenix.  Original Standard Life is now known as Abrdn.  However, Phoenix also took on the running of some of the old Standard Life book but not all of it.

Albermarle

Truro_Paul said:

MorningcoffeeIV said:

Truro_Paul said:

However, the reviews of ReAssure on Trustpilot make pretty grim reading and I understand they are the most complained about company in this field.

They have a 79% 4 and 5 star rating - so unusually high. However, Trustpilot is not somewhere you go to get an accurate idea of a company's performance.

What are your specific concerns?

Customer service seems a recurrent complaint, with reports of being kept waiting weeks and months for payments due to lost forms etc. If I do need to take a lump sum then I would not want to be waiting more than four weeks for the funds. But I am new to this and may be worrying too much about online reviews

Unfortunately delays can be quite commonplace with many financial services providers. Apart from their own problems with staff, IT systems etc. there is a lot of regulatory stuff and they do not seem to cope well with anything that is not straightforward.

After my wife had a shocking experience with Phoenix Life over a two year period trying to transfer the funds from a company pension where the Trustees had disappeared,

Took me 3 years to sort out a similar issue with Scottish Widows.

Plus 6 months to get a DB pension in payment with Mercer.

Truro_Paul

Thank you to everyone who has responded, very much appreciated. I will give ReAssure the opportunity to earn my trust but any unwarranted delays or lack of communication and I will transfer to a new provider.

Thanks again.

Truro_Paul

Realised I haven't updated this. So it took ReAssure 23 working days to set up my Retirement Account which was within the time frame of a month I was expecting. The only downside is that communication could have been better, especially as regards them wanting a form of ID but not asking for it until I chased them up. So overall I would say 8/10.